olympian!yuta x d1!reader | directory | prev. | next.
summary: at the division one level, tennis is more than a sport. it’s your livelihood, and with your doubles partner maki training overseas for the summer, you know you need to step up your game for your last season. luckily for you, your coach has connections. and who better to train you than a rising star olympian? over the course of the summer, you’ll push each other to your breaking points, and maybe farther. set by set, day by day, you start to untangle the mystery that is yuta okkotsu, the man he is off the court and the force he is on it. you might have finally met your match. but just like always—it’s all in the name of the game.
warnings: swearing, no use of y/n, obscenely excessive use of italics and em-dashes as always, memelord toge inumaki, choso being awful at technology, THE RETURN OF THE KING (maki), naoya warning, naoya warning against just in case, jogo is also here but he's just a guy, think of this as the beach episode but they're just at a tennis tournament in ohio, where there's a wii there's a way, toge has such incredible beef with matt the npc mii it's not even funny, lil' steamy toward the end there tbh
|| sfw. 10k words.
YUTA OKKOTSU IS not an impulsive person.
It’s part of what makes him such a good tennis player. He’s calculating, always measuring his opponents up against every possible variable, treating every set like a game of chess. It’s why he and Rika were unstoppable at each other’s side—because he was calm and cool and collected, and she was bright and reckless and undying, until she wasn’t.
He knows the moment Gojo sends him your highlight reel that you have potential like he hasn’t seen in a long, long time. Something about the way you navigate the court as if it’s your natural habitat, the way you serve like a first language. And that ace.
“She wants the Accelerator Program,” Gojo tells him over the phone.
“She’s making it,” Yuta says without missing a beat. “I’ll make sure.” He doesn’t say what he’s thinking, which is more along the lines of she’s going all the way to the fucking Olympics, as soon as I can get her out of her head.
He recognizes himself in you. Raised on doubles, afraid to stand alone. To excel in singles is to learn to take up your share of space on the court, to be unafraid of the dive and the fallback, to take advantage of the openings on the opposition’s side that come with solo play. He has struggled with all the same things, and Miguel has trained them out of him, by sword and by racket and by telling Yuta to stop holding himself back and just play already.
You’re brilliant, and he knows he can help you get even better.
He doesn’t quite expect how much you’ll make him better.
He knows he’s too serious about the game, but he can’t help it, it’s inside of him. Victory in his veins, Gojo said once, and he wasn’t really wrong. But you don’t shy away from the intensity of Yuta on the court the way everyone else seems to. You rise to meet him, dish out the trash talk as well as you take it. He hasn’t felt matched like this in a long, long time, not just as a player but as a person, and he savors it, becomes addicted to it, can’t get enough of the strain and push and pull of the way you play, the way you tease, the way you exist.
And you make him feel normal. Like a part of something. He sits surrounded by your friends in the campus dining center and laughs and bickers and tells stories, and he shows you his favorite songs when you drive him to the airport, and he starts to think of your team, your friends, as his friends, too. Something in him settles, something that hasn’t been still in a very long while.
You beat Gojo and he’s so proud he feels like he could burst. He didn’t know it would feel like this, helping someone become better, teaching them, guiding them. Maybe it’s just because it’s you. His puts his hand on your elbow and you learn a move he took years to master in a single attempt.
He feels like he’s on fire.
It’s not until the Generali Open that he realizes just how deeply you’ve settled into his bones. He raises the ball to serve and thinks, Let’s do this.
That was not part of the plan.
Every time he plays in the pro circuits, he presses his lips to the ball and thinks, It’s for you, Rika. Every time. For years and years and years, her face in his mind, her voice in his ear.
Why didn’t he think that? What changed? What—
It’s not rocket science. He can put two and two together. You’ve transformed him from a single-minded tennis machine on autopilot to the person he’s been trying to become for years. He has been trying for so, so long to decide if he loves this game without Rika in it.
He was beginning to think the answer was no.
But here he is, pressing the ball to his lips and feeling energized not by the memory of Rika but by the thrill of the game, and he knows that’s because of you.
It shouldn’t feel like a betrayal, but he can’t get past it.
He loses the match.
He can’t stop thinking about you.
There’s a tourist shop on the way back to his hotel, and he slips inside, only half-conscious of what he’s looking for. He knows it when he sees it, a flower unfurling, the way you make him feel every time you egg him on, ask him a question, listen to him in a way that doesn’t just hear but sees.
It’s the only thing he purchases in Austria, and he knows he won’t remember this trip for the destination or the tournament but for what it made him realize. For what you made him realize, even from six thousand miles away.
When he gets back, he knows he should just get a taxi to Gojo’s and crash. Should act like a sane person and wait until he sees you the next morning. But the pin burns a hole in his pocket and it’s pouring rain and somehow, somehow, he knows that the weather hasn’t stopped you.
His first love was supposed to be his last. That was part of his plan, his careful calculations. If Yuta knows anything at all about himself, it’s that he’s all-in. Tennis. Love. One and the same, really.
Falling for you, falling into you, accidentally and seamlessly and so, so easily, was not part of the plan.
In the end, though, how could he not? You move like the game was made for you and your laugh puts the sun in the sky and you challenge him every damn day, on the court and off of it, with that sharp grin and quick wit and undeniable talent and drive. You are a force, and after your very first training session, he thought, God, Rika would have loved you.
So he walks through the rain, thinking about how much he loved her. And he doesn’t know what to do.
But the turmoil in his mind comes grinding to a halt when he sees you in the rain, untouched by the chaos of the weather, like the sky is sparing only you. And it should, he thinks. You deserve the whole sky, and everything else.
And then he presses the pin into your hand and suddenly he’s talking about Rika, spilling his guts, laying all his insecurities and his tragedies out for you to pick through, and you do not pity him. You do not offer empty words. You listen and you see and you tell him why you play, and he remembers.
He remembers all over again how he fell in love with tennis. The sheer joy he felt the first time he hit the ball over the net, the pride of his first victory, the dance of the sport that became so much a part of him it’s written in his bone marrow. How he loved Rika and he loved the game and they conflated until he thought those things were one and the same. And they’re not.
He knows he’s obsessive. Things have a tendency to consume him, and Rika was no different. But your love of the game is so great it strikes some tuning fork inside of him, and there’s this resonance, and it’s not just because he’s infatuated with you, and that is the difference.
You’ve just proven to him that he can love his career and he can love a person, and you know what, he might even have more love to spare. You put your hand over his and suddenly he understands that he has the capacity to extend his devotion to the world around him. His heart was broken once, but the excess of love in it has not escaped through the cracks.
The words are out of his mouth before he’s even decided to say them, just like his hand wrapped around your wrist without his permission. Come with me.
It is not part of the plan.
You say yes, and he thinks he could power entire galaxies with the supernova in his chest.
Realizing that he’s in love with you and acting on it are two very different things, and Yuta is too afraid of derailing this bright, new thing to ruin it now. He’s going to wait it out. He’s going to get you into that Accelerator Program and he’s going to congratulate you and then he’s going to ask you if you feel what he feels, this absurd tangle of livewires that shouldn’t fit inside his heart, and if you say no, he will… he doesn’t know.
But that is not for now. That is for later.
Until you beat him.
“Don’t get comfortable,” he says, stealing Fushiguro’s words because you’re right in front of him and he can’t think of any of his own, and you smirk because of course you never get comfortable, that’s why you’re so goddamn good, that’s why he’s so goddamn in love.
You beat him so gracefully, so undeniably, with sharp hits and brilliant returns and inevitable serves, and his plan evaporates. He cannot wait, not with you right here, right now, sweat painting your cheekbones in the floodlights and your breath coming uneven through your teeth.
“I won,” you say.
You’ve won everything.
Yuta Okkotsu is not an impulsive person, so when he backs you up against the chain link fence and his breath tangles with yours in the air, he knows he’s completely, royally fucked.
He doesn’t remember dropping his racket, too focused on the curve of your lips as they part slightly, an unasked question trapped behind your teeth, and your face is so close to his he thinks he might just keel right over, and he has to claw his fingers around the fence just to keep himself standing.
This is nothing. His hand is on your waist and you’re looking at each other and that is not a sin, that is not even an action. This could be an innocent touch, an accidental glance at your lips, this could (should) be nothing.
But somehow, with this one touch, with your eyes wide and locked on his, he’s both bigger and smaller than he’s ever been all at once.
He doesn’t know if he moves first, or if you do. All he knows is the taste of you, the clash of teeth and tongues, the slip of sweat and the press of bodies and oh, how stupid to think he could have waited a second longer for this.
You say his name and he implodes.
“You’re amazing,” he whispers, and it’s all he can get out despite the millions of other words balled up in his chest, You saved my life because you saved my heart and I am so in love with you and I feel alive with you and I never want to take my hand off your skin again.
You deflect, you try to give him credit, and he will have none of it. Because sure, Gojo called him and asked him to train you, and he did, for a while. But you haven’t needed him for a long time now. You trained yourself into the ground and built yourself back up again and you are a brilliant, intangible thing. “Don’t.” He will not let you take this from yourself. “Don’t be humble.”
Your hand is cupping his jaw, and he can’t help leaning into the touch, and suddenly he’s spinning and the cool metal of the fence is pressing into his back and you’re the one in control, which feels right, because haven’t you always been?
Yuta Okkotsu is not an impulsive person, but with you, he’s an unchecked electrical charge.
He loses and finds himself in the gaps between your fingers, your lips against his skin, and he knows something so fundamental has just clicked into place.
It is almost unfathomable, Yuta thinks as you slide a hand up his spine, that he was asleep for so long and did not know it.
But he’s wide awake now.
YOU HAVEN’T TALKED about it.
You haven’t talked about the kiss.
Kiss feels like such a ridiculously small word for the way he set you on fire at that tennis court, the way his touch lit you up from the inside out. But whatever it was, you haven’t brought it up since. Every time the feeling floats to the tip of your tongue, you aren’t sure how to put it into words, and so you channel it into the game, hitting and serving and rallying until your arms are sore, and then it’s time for Cincinnati. Everything is crazy and busy and surreal, and you’re on a plane, watching California grow small through the half-open window, and you haven’t talked about it.
You’re hardly about to do so on a plane next to a veritable tennis celebrity, who’s already been recognized at least three times. It’s strange, realizing that this comes with the territory of being good at your game, being an Olympian. You wonder if you’ll get there, and then quickly shake the thought away in favor of a statement, like Nobara taught you—because my god, girl, could you doubt yourself any louder? We’re practicing manifestation. Sit your ass down.
So: You wonder what it will feel like when you get there.
The Round of 64 won’t start until Saturday, but you arrive on Thursday to get settled and watch some of the qualifiers before Yuta is slated to play. The courts here are standard concrete, hard and blue, but maintained so well you itch to play on them the second you lay eyes on the property. It’s the kind of court you know you’d kill on, unlike clay or grass—you’re still constantly in awe of how easily Yuta adapted to the courts at Wimbledon, the way he could anticipate the ball’s movement on grass despite the slower pace of the game. You resolve to ask him about that, soon, about training on other surfaces. You need to be ready for everything.
But first, Yuta has a meeting on the agenda. Not a meeting for him—a meeting for you.
“This,” he says, nodding with a small smile, “is Toge Inumaki.”
When Yuta talked about Inumaki, you pictured someone calm and collected like he is, someone with an indomitable presence. Imposing. Intimidating. Yuta said you can’t not listen to Toge. So you thought he’d be… well, you don’t know what you thought.
But it sure wasn’t this.
Toge greets you with a very dramatic bow, floppy blond hair nearly brushing the asphalt, and then grins and says, “At your service. Get it? Service? Tennis pun.”
You like him immediately.
Yuta just sighs, but you’re instantly reminded in a weird way of Nobara. You’re certain they would either despise each other or get along in a way that would threaten the whole of the universe.
You introduce yourself, shaking his hand, and say, “Yuta speaks very highly of you.” The shit-eating grin Toge shoots him over your shoulder just makes Yuta sigh again.
“As he should,” Toge says, then drags you toward the courts. “Now, Yuta tells me you’ve got quite an ace.”
The court is a practice one, populated only by a few doubles players on the far end, but you’re fairly certain it’s reserved only for actual competitors.
“I don’t think I’m allowed to be here,” you murmur to Yuta as Toge skips through the open gate.
He just smiles. “Nobody is going to see you play and think you don’t belong here. I can promise you that.”
Something in you warms at the praise, and you have to turn your face away under the guise of adjusting your visor so he doesn’t see your blush.
Toge tosses you a ball, and you catch it in one hand before bouncing it a few times, getting a feel for the court.
You glance at Yuta, uncertain. He nods.
You hold your racket high and serve an absolute bullet.
Toge actually shrieks as it barrels toward him, lurching back but coming up drastically short. The ball bounces inside the line and rolls harmlessly toward the fence, and Toge’s jaw drops as he turns to you.
“Holy shit,” he says, then starts bouncing on the balls of his feet as he glances between you and Yuta. “Yuta. Where did you find this woman? What the fuck? She’s a god.” He looks back at you. “You’re a tennis god.”
Yuta just smiles at you sheepishly, like sorry about him, but Toge has already launched into a very off-key rendition of God is a Woman and you actually think you’d like him to be your friend immediately.
You accept the next ball Yuta tosses your way and interrupt Toge’s singing with a shouted, “Love-love.”
And you play.
—
Yuta is going to take his first opponent in three sets without even breaking a sweat. He’s already dominated the first two, and he’s not letting up on the lanky guy across the court, some guy named Eso who looks oddly familiar but you can’t place.
Toge, fresh off his own first match, whistles low beside you.
“What a freak,” he says reverently. Your phone buzzes.
cho: can you tell your man to chill?
cho: he has no mercy. none
cho: :((((
It takes you a moment to figure out what he’s talking about, and then you remember with a start that Eso is Choso’s brother, one of the ones from out of state he’s always talking about. You swear to god he has a million siblings and you can’t keep track to save your life.
you: “my man”
you: you’re typing in lowercase?
you: who are you and what have you done with choso
cho: ino shut off my auto caps and punctuation and i cant figure out how to turn them back on
cho: he said i type like a heathen
You laugh out loud. Choso is maybe the most hopeless person you know when it comes to technology. Once, he’d wanted to watch one of his brothers in the US Open and couldn’t figure out how to get to the stream. Hakari had to explain the concept of pirating and painstakingly get Choso to get to the bootleg link without infecting his computer with a thousand viruses.
Toge looks at you questioningly. “That’s my friend’s brother,” you say, nodding at Eso. “One of his other ones is here too, actually.” You pull up the bracket and scan for his name. “He could end up playing Yuta too, if he gets to the third round.”
“Should I start booing Yuta?” Toge asks earnestly. “I have no issue with that.” He opens his mouth as if to start shouting obscenities and you clap a hand over it.
“Toge!”
Even if he had wanted to boo Yuta, there’s no time, because the set has just ended with a killer backhand to the far corner of the court. Yuta wins. Eso’s shoulders slump in a sigh, but he approaches the net to shake Yuta’s hand over it. You can see their mouths moving as Yuta laughs, and you wonder if they’re talking about Choso. He and Yuta get along well and are around the same age, Choso having stretched his D1 eligibility like Maki to stick around another season.
When you and Toge find Yuta after the match, he’s already pulled up the bracket on his phone, searching for his next opponent.
“You can’t let yourself bask in the glory for two seconds?” Yuta is such a single-minded beast on the court. Always thinking about his next move, his next set, his next opponent.
When he hears your voice, he looks up from the screen so fast you’re briefly worried his neck might snap. “Hey,” he grins.
“Hey yourself.”
“Why don’t you ever look that excited to see me?” Toge says, offended, and goes to tackle Yuta in a hug. “Give me your affection!”
“Get off me, you gremlin.” He’s doing a terrible job stifling his laughter.
Two days later, Yuta takes on a cocky guy with a long, blond ponytail and a leering, condescending smirk. You don’t even remember his name after hearing it twice, but his voice is high and grating, and you’re glad when Yuta pummels him.
Men’s tennis, at least in the pro circuits, plays five sets rather than three, and it fascinates you—seeing the pace work itself out, the stretch of time that forces each player to their limit. Not that Yuta has really been pushed to his limit yet, or anywhere close.
Toge is also impressive on the court, sweeping through his opponents effortlessly, and then it’s the third match.
Sure enough, Yuta winds up against Choso and Eso’s brother. His name is Kechizu, and you can see something of Choso’s playstyle in his movements. Choso comes from a tennis family, and all of them have distinct serves but the same familiar backhand that makes them such a threat. You wonder what happens when they play each other.
By now, the crowd knows what to expect of Yuta Okkotsu, and they’re dialed in on his every move. You almost feel a little bad for Kechizu, pitted against such a big-time opponent. But Kechizu doesn’t look sorry. In fact, he looks like he’s having the time of his life, absorbing every blow without a flinch and adapting to Yuta’s strategy as he goes.
This match goes to the fourth set, and Kechizu even manages to get a service break once, but he’s still out of his element against Yuta’s sheer skill.
cho: oh my god
cho: not again
takumaaa :D: girl choso is in mourning
takumaaa :D: mourning? morning? wait
You don’t know when Ino got into your phone again to change his contact name. It’s been a recurring battle for years now.
takumaaa :D: AHA it’s mourning i was right
Right as Yuta wins, your phone rings, and you glance down to see Maki’s name dancing across the screen.
“Are you in Pacific time?” you ask without prelude. “I can feel it. I can feel the aura.” You’ve been religiously counting down the days until she comes back from Japan, and today she’s supposed to have landed back in the States. Fucking finally. Your one hesitation about going to Cincinnati with Yuta was that you wouldn’t be there to greet her, but she shut you down so fast you didn’t even have a chance to argue. You’re going, she’d said, and if you fight me I’ll stay in Japan.
You both knew damn well it was an empty threat, but you laughed and told her the message had been received.
“Indeed,” she says through a yawn. “Also, no you can’t. You’re in Central. Shut up.” She has a point. “Listen, I’m about to go sleep for at least twenty-four hours. But what if I came to Cinci after?”
You almost drop your phone.
“What?” You process the words. Maki, here. “I mean, yes, god, yes. But are you—like, are you sure? You just got back.”
“I’m sure,” Maki says, and you were expecting it, because she’s sure about everything. Except when she was pining after Nobara, which Nobara has begged you for details about ever since that one dinner. “I want to meet this Okkotsu guy, watch some pro play before we have to lock in for the invitational. Also, my dickwad cousin is there, and I wanna see him get his assed whooped. Is that cool with you?”
“Is that cool with me,” you scoff. “I mean, Nobara might kill us both. But yes. Please do. Please come. That’s—yes.” You’ve missed Maki so much, and you’re dying to get her on the court again, to test your new skills against hers, to hear all about training under Mei Mei and to introduce Maki and Yuta and—
Oh, god.
Maki knows you as well as you know your own racket. Even through the phone, she’s picked up on more of your whirlwind of feelings surrounding Yuta than you’d like to admit. You haven’t told her about the kiss yet. But she’ll know the second she lays eyes on you.
Toge nods toward the courts, an indication that he’s going to go catch up with Yuta, and you wave him off and mouth be there soon.
“Don’t bother with a hotel room,” you tell her. “You can crash in mine.”
“You sure?” she says, that teasing undertone shining clear through her exhaustion. “You don’t wanna share that bed with—”
“Maki!”
—
It’s a Saturday morning the day Maki finally arrives, the day of the quarterfinals. The Ohio sun is unrelenting, the air humid and slicking the back of your neck with sweat. You spent the morning hitting with Yuta and Toge, the two of them warming up for their matches today and you absorbing everything you could.
The way they play together reminds you of you and Maki—wordlessly anticipating one another’s moves, making for long rallies and fast shots, and it made you miss her even more. She steps out of the cab, all quiet confidence and readiness, wholly herself after settling in back home and kicking the jet lag.
You practically scream as you barrel into her, nearly knocking her right back into the backseat. “Christ, hello to you too,” she huffs, but you can hear the affection in her voice as she hugs you back.
“I missed you so much,” you say. “Never, ever, ever do that again.”
“What, train under an Olympian?” she smirks, knowing that wasn’t what you meant. “I feel like that resolution won’t last long, given…” When she pulls back, you follow her gaze over your shoulder to see Yuta engaged in animated conversation with Toge. She raises a brow at you and you feel your whole face go beet-red.
“It’s not—”
“Yes,” she interrupts, slinging an arm around your shoulder. “It is.”
You sigh and lean into Maki’s familiar warmth, and it’s like she never left. Thank god. You missed your partner. You missed your best friend.
She grabs her stuff from the trunk—racket, tennis bag, and alarmingly small backpack. She’s an absurdly light packer, and you’re the opposite. Yeah, you probably don’t need ten pairs of socks for a weekend trip, but what if something happens to eight pairs of them and then you’re left without extra socks? You never know.
You snag Maki’s stupidly light backpack and let her handle her tennis stuff, leading the way to the hotel entrance. “This is Maki,” you proclaim proudly as Yuta and Toge turn to face you. “Doubles partner extraordinaire, and also my best friend.”
Yuta holds out a hand. “Nice to meet you,” he says, and it would sound like stiff small talk coming from anyone else. But you can tell he means it.
“Okkotsu,” Maki says, shaking his hand firmly before he can introduce himself. “Heard a lot about you.” Yuta raises a brow your way, and you tug your visor down on your head as if that’ll hide the red in your face. “And you must be Inumaki.”
Toge’s eyes widen. “She knows me,” he stage-whispers to Yuta.
Maki and Yuta fall into conversation as you enter the hotel, and Toge holds the door before letting it swing closed behind the both of you. “She’s scary,” he murmurs.
“Oh my god. She’s not, I promise!” As soon as you say it, you’re pretty sure you’ve just lied.
Maki can be pretty imposing if you don’t know her, and even if you do know her, she’s someone you want to keep on your good side. As Yuji and Megumi well know, the wrath of Maki Zenin is not lightly incurred or escaped.
Toge gives you a meaningful look that reads something like yeah right, and you just giggle. Maki and Yuta seem to already get along, having jumped into a conversation about her awful cousin Naoya and the way he tries to run his opponents down early. It’ll be a beneficial discussion if he does make it far enough to play Yuta or Toge.
You hope he doesn’t. He’s a dick.
After dumping Maki’s stuff in your room, Toge heads out to get ready for his quarterfinal matchup and Yuta heads to the practice courts. You and Maki walk around the many courts hosting the day’s matches, catching glimpses of familiar and unfamiliar players, simultaneously analyzing matchups and catching up on the summer.
“That woman is insane,” Maki says. “I actually don’t know how I’m not dead. I swear she doesn’t feel normal human emotions. She ran me into the ground.”
Mei Mei is terrifying on the court, but according to Maki, she’s also terrifying off of it. “Half the time I was convinced she’s living a double life scamming people out of their money. But the other half, she’s such a damn good tennis player I couldn’t even care.”
Maki goes on a tirade about the drills Mei Mei had her run day after day, and her kind of creepy little brother who was always hanging around the courts, but the ranting is punctuated with statements that subtly make you understand Maki had a great summer. That it was hard, but worth her time; that it was brutal, but necessary. That she respects Mei Mei as a tennis player even if maybe nobody should respect her as a person, and that she’s excited to get back on the court here and kick some ass.
Then she asks about you.
More specifically, about you and Yuta.
For a while you’re able to dodge the question, walking her through your summer training in the same way she did hers, but by the time you’ve done two laps around all the courts, you’ve run out of ways to evade.
“So you kissed,” she says, and you stop in your tracks.
“Damn it!” You glare at her. “How do you know everything all the time? Do you have spies?”
“No, but I have eyes,” she drawls, leaning against the side of a vacant set of bleachers. “You keep dancing around each other. What’s the deal? Are you a thing or not?”
You climb up onto the bleachers and bury your head in your hands. “I don’t know,” you groan truthfully. “We haven’t talked about it since it happened. I can’t figure out if it’s just a casual thing or if he, like…”
“Forget his feelings for a second,” Maki says, and you look up through your hands at her. “Do you want to be with him?”
You instinctively go to blurt out I don’t know, but Maki’s no-bullshit expression stops you.
Of course you do know. It’s all you’ve been able to think about since he pressed you up against that fence.
“Yeah,” you murmur, and Maki nods, unfazed.
“Then ask if he does, too, and get it over with. Worst case scenario, it was a casual thing and you move on. Best case scenario, it wasn’t, and you’re dating a pro tennis player.” She shrugs, like this is all simple and easy and black-and-white, like the concept of asking Yuta what you mean to him doesn’t tie your stomach into a bunch of knots like a fucking balloon animal.
Reading your hesitation, Maki sighs, pulling herself up onto the bleachers next to you. “If you wait, it’s just gonna mess with your head even more.”
You know she’s right. Maki’s always right.
The gates open and an official leads two players onto the court in front of you as people start to file in from other matches. Toge finds you in the crowd and waves excitedly, and you crack a grin and wave back. You’ve unintentionally stopped right at his court.
Someone sits down beside you, and you turn to find Yuta, a relieved smile on his face. “Thought I was gonna be late,” he says, then glances over you and waves at Maki.
Maki is entirely at ease, but you’re worried Yuta can somehow read the conversation you just had in the air. Like your messed up feelings are written all over your face.
But he just turns to face the court, elbows on his knees, dialing in. He must recognize the other guy on the court, though you don’t. “Oh, he’s got this,” Yuta says, half to himself.
And he does. Whatever worries you have about Yuta fade into the back of your mind the second Toge serves, and you’re locked in, head following the ball back and forth and back and forth as Toge wins one set, loses, wins another.
Four sets and the guy is slinking off the court while the PA system announces that Toge Inumaki has advanced to the semifinals. You’re cheering, grabbing Yuta’s arm as you jump up and down, and he laughs and throws an arm over your shoulder in celebration.
Did the sun just get hotter?
Maki shoots you a look out of the corner of her eye. Fine, you mouth.
You’ll talk to him.
But right now, it’s his turn.
You reconnect with Toge outside the court as Yuta splits off to get to his own match, and the three of you take your time getting there, knowing you’ll be early enough to get good seats.
Yuta’s opponent is a bulkier guy, Jogo or something, who plays an incredibly different style of tennis than Yuta’s other opponents. He’s all power and brute force, none of Yuta’s finesse, but it’s threatening in a different way. You can see the calculation in Yuta’s eyes, and by the third game of the first set, it becomes clear what strategy he’s settled on.
He’s going to run Jogo around this court like a dog.
Jogo might have the strength, but he doesn’t have Yuta’s endurance, and by the time the second set rolls around, Yuta is consistently winning service breaks. You can’t help grinning as you watch. Jogo is undoubtedly talented. But he’s no match for Yuta Okkotsu.
Is anyone?
Jogo is exhausted by set three, but he turns it around and pulls one over on Yuta, though the victory is narrow. He tries to keep Yuta close to the baseline, but there’s no point, because Yuta’s returns are all over the place. There’s no rhyme or reason to his trajectories—he’ll hit four different places on the court and then the fifth one three times in a row, just to fuck with Jogo.
Four sets and it’s over, Yuta victorious. Toge is grinning, and you aren’t sure if it’s because of the win or because of the heightening chances of playing his best friend.
They’re not pitted against each other in the semifinals. But if they both win, it’ll be a hell of a final round.
You glance at Maki as the announcer crowns Yuta victorious, and to any bystander she’d look bored. But you’re well versed in the subtlest changes in her expressions, and you can tell she’s deeply impressed.
“If he plays like that,” she tells you lowly, “I am so excited to get your ass back on the court.”
—
Toge is hanging upside down on the couch in the hotel common room, watching some Instagram reel without headphones on, and laughing like a maniac.
“This guy is insane,” he says, shoving the screen your way. You flop down on the floor with your back against the couch beside him and take the phone in your hand just as the reel starts over.
It’s a guy with pink hair. He’d remind you of Yuji if it weren’t for the dark tattoos on his face and the sheer condescension of his expression—someone who should by all standards be intimidating, if it weren’t for the fact that the thing he’s so intensely ranting about is a low-quality recording of Yuta’s quarterfinals match. He’s giving commentary that also appears in thick white bubble letters, and you feel like you’re watching a video game stream.
“Look at this bitch,” the guy says, zooming in on Jogo. “He moves like a fuckin’ rock. My nephew can do better than that.”
Then the camera pans to Yuta, and the man whistles appreciatively before laughing a little maniacally. “This one, though. This little guy is insane, look at him—boom,” he cackles as Yuta hits an ace that Jogo has no hope of getting to in time. “Ooh, he’s a good fight. He might look like a little middle school twink, but look at that serve.” He plays another clip back and you don’t even hear what he says, because you’re cackling at the way he just called Olympian Yuta Okkotsu a “little middle school twink.”
Toge grins, takes his phone back, and hits follow.
“This guy’s whole livelihood is unhinged commentary on tennis,” he says. “He even does NCAA.”
You raise a brow and make a note to look into this later. Has he talked about you?
“That shit is monetized?”
Toge shrugs. “You can monetize anything nowadays. I have a burner account where I just post AI covers of Waluigi singing Post Malone songs and that shit blows up every time.”
The same man that apparently monetizes AI-generated Waluigi online is set to play Naoya Zenin in the semifinals.
“I kind of wish it was you,” Toge tells Yuta. “More fun that way.”
“I’ll kick your ass any time you like,” Yuta reassures him. Then Toge’s gaze drifts to the lounge’s television setup, lingering on the Wii.
“Anytime?” Toge grins.
Yuta groans. “Oh, no.”
Toge tries to flip himself off the couch and winds up half on the floor, half in your lap. “Well, hello,” you say.
Without missing a beat, he asks, “You any good at Wii tennis?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” You shoot Maki a massive grin as Yuta reluctantly digs four controllers out of the basket near the window, and she smirks back.
You’ve spent many a night in tense competition with Yuji and Megumi on the court. You’ve possibly spent even more nights duking it out on the Wii.
“I love doubles on Wii,” Toge says in a sing-song voice. “That way I don’t have to play Matt. That guy is op numero uno. I swear, he wants me dead.”
The familiar Wii Sports theme has all four of you lining up in front of the TV, and for some reason you feel more competitive about this than real tennis, at least in this moment. It’s partially the late hour, partially being reunited with Maki, and partially the way Toge keeps sneaking smug glances at you and Maki.
“You really think you have a chance, huh?” Maki snorts.
Toge goes pale.
“She’s kidding,” you whisper, nudging him in the ribs. Maki raises a brow at you and you amend, “Kind of.”
Toge selects a random Mii and opens up the customization settings so fast nobody has time to stop him. It’s actually mildly alarming how adept he is at navigating Wii controls, mostly because he’s a professional tennis player and how in god’s name does he have this much time on his hands? The eyebrows are now floating above the head of the green-skinned INUMAKIIII, making them look like alien antennae.
“He does this every time,” Yuta sighs, resigned.
Yuta picks a generic-looking guy but changes the name to Yuta, and you follow suit, side-eyeing him as you type in Ace.
He smiles.
Maki zeroes in on where, apparently, somebody has painstakingly duplicated the Matt NPC as a playable avatar. She gives Toge a shit-eating grin.
“No,” he begs with a levity that actually shocks you. “No, spare me, please. Not Matt. Anyone but Matt.”
She picks Matt.
Toge mourns her avatar choice for the entirety of the first match, which you dominate. Then Yuta looks at him and says, “Are you gonna keep playing around?”
An entirely new Toge emerges from the ashes of the one you once knew.
This man is an absolute menace. You have never seen anyone play the Wii more intensely—or precisely—than Toge Inumaki, at least when he’s not on the ground monologuing about Matt’s vengeance.
“Toge,” you say after he’s beaten you and Maki into the ground twice. “What the actual fuck? What Wii tennis prodigy school did you go to?”
“This is just how I train,” he says, so entirely deadpan that for a second you actually believe him.
Once he’s in his element, he loudly challenges “Matt” to a singles “duel of honor,” and Maki obliges. She actually holds her own against him, and they go back and forth for so long that you and Yuta strike up a conversation on the couch.
“He’s the most insane person I’ve ever met,” you tell Yuta sagely, nodding in Toge’s direction. “And that’s… a statement, coming from me.”
“Oh, I know.” Yuta nods fondly. “No words to describe Toge Inumaki, I guess. Did I tell you he lost a bet once and spoke only in sushi ingredients for a full forty-eight hours?”
“He…” You blink. “What?”
“Mhm. We call it the Salmon Incident. I still can’t decide if the worst part was him running around shouting about tuna mayo, or me actually understanding what he meant by the second day.”
“Dear god.”
Yuta shakes his head. “God certainly was not there.”
Toge shrieks so loud you nearly jump off the couch, instead falling practically into Yuta’s lap as your heart stutters. “Jesus, Toge!”
“He’s done it,” Toge announces, spinning to face you and dramatically wiping away imaginary tears. “He’s thwarted me once again.”
“He is right here and warned you that you would lose,” Maki shrugs.
Yuta chuckles, and the sound rumbles against your shoulder. You’re suddenly hyperaware of your position, your side pressed up against his chest, fingers wrapped around his forearm. Oh, god.
He must register your embarrassment, because he just offers you a reassuring smile. Which makes it worse. He can probably feel your pulse through your wrist.
You very pointedly don’t look at Maki as you murmur an apology and stand up, making a conscious effort not to physically shake out your limbs in the absence of Yuta’s warmth.
Toge closes his eyes and points the Wii remote at Yuta. “Please,” he whispers. “Avenge me.”
Yuta does.
—
Naoya Zenin is a prick.
Every story Maki’s ever told about him has confirmed this, but his match against Toge hasn’t even started before you see exactly what she means. From your vantage point about halfway up the bleachers, you can see the harsh movement of his mouth, Toge turned away from you.
You’re too far to understand what he’s saying, but Yuta grimaces. “Toge’s off his game,” he murmurs. “Whatever that guy just said…”
It’s nothing obvious—you watch Toge grin, make some fast quip, dance back to his side of the court as light as always. But Yuta knows Toge like you know Maki. If he says something is wrong, something is wrong.
“Fuck him,” Maki seethes. “I hope Inumaki runs him into the ground.”
For a brief, ridiculous moment, you can only see Naoya as a cartoonish little Mii.
Toge serves harder than usual, and Naoya makes absolutely no move toward the ball. He just lets it hit inside the line, practically gives Toge the point, and then gives him a lazy, wide grin.
“What is he doing?” you mutter.
“What he does best.” Maki scowls. “Manipulation.”
You’ve only known Toge for a few days, but already you’re certain he’s one of the most unflappable people out there. Sure, he might threaten to go to war against an NPC, but it’s hard to imagine anyone actually getting under his skin.
But sure enough, his next serve is off, closer to Naoya as if he wants him to hit it back. To move, to try. Naoya returns a lazy backhand, and they rally a few times before Naoya slams it just inside the baseline. Toge lunges, but it’s too late.
“Fuck,” you mutter, glancing at Yuta. He looks concerned, but only mildly.
Earlier today, he and some tall guy named Dagon stretched their semifinal matchup to five sets, pushing each other to the edge. Dagon rivaled Yuta in the fluidity of his movements, like the air was water around him, moving so fast you felt like he must’ve had extra arms or some shit. And he was strong to boot—like Jogo, but with all of Yuta’s grace.
Still, Yuta won, cementing his spot in the finals. And you expected that final matchup to come down to him and Toge. But now, you’re not so sure.
“Give him a few games. He’ll turn this around.” Yuta sounds so sure of himself, not in an arrogant sense, but in a way so matter-of-fact that you can’t help but believe him.
You wonder if Yuta has that sort of confidence in you. The thought makes something dangerous light itself up in your chest.
Toge does turn it around, snagging two service breaks by the time he takes the first set. But Naoya still looks unconcerned, and he keeps sending knowing glances Toge’s way, oscillating between high effort and absolutely none. It’s not just throwing Toge off—the audience is antsy, too, and you can tell none of them actually want Naoya to win.
They trade sets, back and forth, and after Naoya ties it up by taking set four, he actually yawns. Arms in the air, stretching, making no effort to hide it.
“Oh, fuck you,” Maki mutters beside you. You know looks can’t kill, because if they did, Naoya would be burning alive.
At one point, you get so frustrated you stand up to take a lap around the bleachers. They’re trading games back and forth, 4-4 now, and it’s been over three hours.
5-5.
6-6.
It’s a tiebreak game. You can’t stop running your hands through your hair, tugging just enough to hurt, because you want to strangle Naoya Zenin and his self-satisfied smirk. Even he can’t hide how tired he is now, the both of them panting as they take their positions.
You curse out loud when you realize it’s Naoya’s serve. The odds are stacked against Toge.
He gets the first point, but Toge gets the second. Then it’s 3-3. 4-4. 5-5. 6-5 as Naoya slams one right to Toge’s feet, giving him no time to get a racket under the ball. 6-6.
6-7, and Toge looks out into the crowd and locks eyes with Yuta. You’re sure you’re about to witness some kind of serious exchange. But then Toge lifts his hands and moves them up and down like he’s dribbling two balls, mouthing “six seven.”
“Oh my god,” you say out loud. “I actually think he should lose for that.” You don’t mean it, and Yuta can’t help laughing. But then it’s 7-7. 7-8. 8-8. It’s been four hours.
9-8. Match point.
If Naoya gets this, the tiebreak is over. The match is his.
“Come on,” you murmur under your breath. “Come on, Toge.”
They rally for what feels like forever but really can’t be more than twenty seconds. And then Naoya, with the most audacity you’ve ever seen, runs his hand through his hair as Toge’s ball soars through the air toward him. Like he’s bored.
And he slams it back.
Naoya wins.
—
Maki is still fuming hours later as the four of you hit on the practice courts, cursing Naoya out as she nails balls into the fence. “You have to run him into the ground,” she tells Yuta firmly.
“Avenge Toge like you did last night,” you nod. Yuta sighs.
The thing is, Maki is infinitely more upset about the loss than Toge. Toge actually seems… entirely unfazed. You stand at Yuta’s side, watching as Toge balances a tennis ball on his nose like a trick seal.
“How is he so unaffected by this?” you murmur, not really expecting a response.
“Work life balance!” Toge shouts.
Turns out, whatever Naoya said to him on the court was about Toge’s family. Apparently he’d done some research. Toge was more surprised that Naoya knew anything than affected by the actual shit-talking.
“Oh, you know, stuff about how I’m the worthless son and will never live up to my family’s great expectations or some shit,” he shrugged. “Truly, I don’t care. He doesn’t know anything.”
You were sure he couldn’t mean that, but he really seems indifferent about the whole ordeal. It’s like the words slid right off him, rain on a parka. The most you got out of him was a solemn nod and a Yuta, you must fight to the death. He is my Matt.
Yuta shrugs. “He’s just like that.”
When Maki is done raging about Naoya’s very existence, you fall into place at her side, the boys across from you on the court. This is what you’ve been waiting for. Your blood feels alive with anticipation.
It’s time to play doubles.
It is everything you thought it would be. You’re at an entirely new level from where you were at the beginning of the summer, but so is Maki. You read each other’s intentions and movements, adapt to each other’s improvements in the silent language of eye contact and minute gestures. It’s as if you’ve been growing side by side all these months, not an entire ocean apart.
This is the level of play you’re hungry for, the kind that’ll matter in the Olympics. NCAA tennis reduces a whole exhausting three sets of doubles to one point, and it’s always felt like such a diminishment of all the work and time that goes into it.
You and Maki lose, but you can’t deny it’s the best tennis you’ve ever played. You’re exhausted, limbs sagging, breath coming short and shallow, but you feel more accomplished than you have after any victory.
Well. Almost any victory, you think.
Your back against a chain link fence. Yuta’s breath mingling with yours—
“Nice, Ace,” Yuta calls, and your gaze snaps to his as if drawn by opposite magnetic poles. “That last slice was perfect.”
“I—thanks,” you call back, trying desperately to collect yourself. “That was great, both of you.”
“Count me impressed, Inumaki,” Maki admits.
Toge does a backflip—you didn’t know he could do that—and then shrugs, and Maki stares at him for a long moment before informing him, “You are so concerning. As a person.”
He beams.
“I wish you could come back to Kaisen after this,” you sigh as you grab your water bottle, taking a long, cold swig. “With Yuta. That was the best doubles match I’ve played in…”
Maki meets your gaze. “Years,” she finishes.
“What if I did?”
You freeze, turning to face Toge. “What? Aren’t you on the full ATP tour?” You frown. “When’s your next comp, next weekend?”
“I can play hooky,” Toge says devilishly, wiggling his brows. Yuta snorts, and Toge grins. “Nah, nah. I’m not going to Winston-Salem. It’s a 250 and I’m in the top thirty already. Should be fine.”
“Brag much?” Yuta teases.
“Would you be cool with that?” Toge asks Yuta. “Me crashing for a few days, playing doubles with these insane college prodigies you found? I wanna see Gojo anyway.”
“You know Gojo, too?” Maki groans. “Why does he know everyone?”
Toge just grins and says, “My secrets shall never be revealed.”
“You should, though,” Yuta says. “Come back with us. It’ll be good. Keep us sharp before the US Open, get you guys ready for that invitational.” He directs this last part at you and Maki.
“He knows your schedule,” Maki notes, low enough that only you can hear. “Interesting.”
“Yeah, because he’s training me,” you mutter heatedly.
“Yeah, that’s why.” She snorts.
Yuta and Toge are talking travel plans now, calling up Gojo to see if Toge can crash for a few nights, and so you turn back to Maki and desperately whisper, “Help me.”
“This, I’m afraid, is a you problem,” she says, and for what it’s worth, there’s some genuine sympathy in her voice as she puts a hand on your shoulder. “Just talk to him. Bite the bullet.”
“Horrible advice.” But you turn and look at Yuta again, right as he laughs, bright and loud and open, at something Gojo said on the phone.
Damn it.
You have to talk to him.
—
Your room is directly across the hall from Yuta’s. He booked a single, Toge on the floor below because apparently he snores like an elephant. Maki’s already knocked out on the bed, and you find yourself pacing back and forth, back and forth, just thinking.
He is just feet away, if you’d get your head out of your ass and knock on his door.
For maybe two full minutes, you stand with your hand on your own doorknob, willing yourself to open it.
What’s the worst that can happen? Maki’s voice says in your head.
Well, he could say no. No, he doesn’t have feelings for you, everything was purely physical, a distraction, a convenience, and why would you think that and now it’s weird and actually I have to go train alone for the rest of the summer and I’m never coming back and—
“Shut up,” you hiss, and then clap a hand over your mouth, looking back over your shoulder to see if Maki heard. She doesn’t stir, and you let out an unsteady breath.
Fuck it.
You open the door.
You’re staring directly at Yuta.
“Oh,” he says. “Sorry. I, uh… I guess we had…”
You almost blurt out some stupid lie like oh, I was just going to the ice machine! But you bite your tongue, because something in Yuta’s eyes mirrors yours right now. You’re pretty sure you opened your doors for the same reason.
“Yeah,” you breathe. “Um…”
“Do you…” He laughs sheepishly, glancing behind you to see Maki already occupying your room. “Do you want to come in?”
You nod mutely, quietly closing your own door behind you and padding across the hall. Yuta’s room is neat, just an open suitcase on the floor in the corner with all his clothes tidy and folded, his tennis stuff leaning against the wall near the door. Not enough to pretend to look at, to avert your gaze from his.
He shuts the door, and before you can say anything, he takes a deep breath and says, “Look, I’m sorry.”
Your heart plummets.
He crosses in front of you on his way to the bed and pats the space beside him. You hesitate for a second before moving toward him, perching on the edge.
“I know we should have talked about this sooner and it’s… it’s entirely my fault that it’s taken so long. I just—I guess I had some reservations about…”
“You don’t need to do this,” you say in a rush, and Yuta looks at you, surprised. “I—you don’t need to apologize, I mean. It’s fine, I get it, if it was just a one-time thing and you don’t feel that way, we can just keep on training like—”
“Wait, no! No,” Yuta blurts, seeming surprised by his own volume and sitting back a bit, stunned. “I mean… no, that’s not what I meant at all. God, I’m bad at this. Listen.” He pulls one leg up on the bed, turning to face you fully, and reaches out to take your hand in both of his.
You can feel your heartbeat in every part of your body.
“I don’t have reservations about you. I’ve never had reservations about you. Please know that.” He swallows, hard, and you find yourself following the line of his throat, his arms, his watch, anything but his eyes. “It’s more of… I told you about Rika, already. I don’t know if I told you I loved her like that, but it probably wasn’t hard to tell.” He sighs.
At that, you meet his gaze. His eyes are wide, earnest, dark. So many emotions contained in such little space. It’s just like he makes you feel, like your heart is too big for your skin.
“After she died, I didn’t feel… worthy, I guess. Of survival. Why her and not me, you know? Without her everything felt so pointless.” He laughs humorlessly. “It’s like I—I wasn’t needed by anyone, so was any of it worth it? It took me a long time to realize that people did care about me. I’m still figuring that out, actually. Finding the confidence to… to know it’s okay to live, even without her.”
Oh.
All the tension flows out of you, a broken damn. “Yuta,” you murmur. His cheeks go a little red at the sound of his name on your lips. “I’m proud of you.”
He goes still.
“I mean it.” You put your free hand on top of his. “It’s… that’s not easy. Letting yourself open up again. And we can take it—this, whatever this is—as slow as you need to.”
“Whatever this is,” he echoes, a faint smile on his face. “What is this?”
Somehow, you feel like the first time you went to the US Open as a kid. Sitting on the very edge of your seat, heart in your throat as the ball flew back and forth, scared to blink for fear of missing anything. Like somehow, everything hinges on this moment, right now.
"That’s what I wanted to ask,” you say quietly.
Yuta swallows, looks down like he’s steeling himself. “I know I said, just now, that I was learning to… to live, without her.” And then his eyes lock onto yours, dark, intense. “I meant that. But I also meant learning to love.”
The single syllable steals the breath right out of your lungs.
“I know that’s a big, stupid word with a lot of connotations,” he chuckles nervously. “And I know I can be… intense. And you don’t need to feel that way too, not now, not yet, I just—you said it’s a hard thing, opening up again. And it is, it should be. But that’s the thing. It’s not hard, with you. It’s like—god, I can’t even help myself. I can’t stop it.”
He lets go of one of your hands, his fingers floating up to your cheek, your jaw. “You’re incredible, Ace.”
“I…” You find yourself tilting your head, leaning to meet his touch. You want him near you in every way possible. “Yuta, you… you’re incredible, too. I mean that.” Your wrap your fingers around his wrist, pressing his hand against your face.
And you say, “I want this. I want you.”
There is one long, silent moment.
And then Yuta smiles and says, “Thank god.”
In a split second, he’s on you, his hand slipping down your jaw to your neck, your shoulder, and his lips are on yours again, and it’s like you never stopped kissing but also, somehow, like you’ve never felt this before. You don’t remember laying down. You don’t remember sliding your hands beneath the thin, white fabric of his shirt. “Yuta.”
He breathes against your cheekbone, so close the strands of his dark hair brush your forehead. “Hm?”
His hands are wide, strong, long fingers pressed against your collarbone, caressing the strands of your hair. Every one of your senses is amplified—your heartbeat is thunder, his uneven breaths a bassline, your skin and his hot against each other.
“You’re sure about this?” you breathe. “It’s not gonna… mess with your focus, you don’t need to—”
Yuta silences you by pressing his lips to yours, smirking as he pulls away. “I’m sure.” There’s a mischievous glint in his eye as he cages you in with his elbows on the mattress, his knee between your legs. “You know. Work-life balance.”
Well, you’re not going to argue with that.
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a/n: yuta’s POV is for @princess-okkotsu specifically it had not even occurred to me until this brilliant suggestion thank you
olympian!yuta x d1!reader | directory | prev. | next.
summary: at the division one level, tennis is more than a sport. it’s your livelihood, and with your doubles partner maki training overseas for the summer, you know you need to step up your game for your last season. luckily for you, your coach has connections. and who better to train you than a rising star olympian? over the course of the summer, you’ll push each other to your breaking points, and maybe farther. set by set, day by day, you start to untangle the mystery that is yuta okkotsu, the man he is off the court and the force he is on it. you might have finally met your match. but just like always—it’s all in the name of the game.
warnings: swearing, no use of y/n, obscenely excessive use of italics and em-dashes as always, nobara wants to be a matchmaker so bad, i can't write a fic without making megumi a little bit angsty, y'all something possessed me during The Fence Scene
|| sfw (but it’s a little steamy guys). 9.1k words.
IT FEELS WRONG to type her name into your search engine. You try three separate times before Yuta gets back from Wimbledon, but your thumb just hovers over the button, unable to press it.
You know it’s public knowledge. She was an Olympian with a Wikipedia page—Nobara already told you how she died. But diving into it yourself just feels so wrong, knowing you’ll be seeing Yuta any day now, appearing on the court like some kind of hyperactive mirage as you crest over the hill in the morning. (He always tells you when he’s leaving for some 1000 or Slam or whatever, but he always shows up again unannounced.)
So you don’t look, and you promise yourself you won’t ask. But all of his words in Gojo’s office take on a new tint in retrospect, painted over with the specter of Rika Orimoto.
I was lost in it, I guess.
He found me at a time when I was really desperate for the guidance.
I didn’t know where I was going.
He’d said Inumaki and you’d just assumed they were doubles partners. That maybe there was a falling out and they’d made up, or agreed to part ways to get stronger on their own. It’s on you, jumping to conclusions. Mixed doubles. You’re kicking yourself for not asking.
Made me build myself up from the ground.
They all said I was a different player when I came back.
Doubles was my first love.
His faraway gaze, biting his bottom lip, finger tense against his knee. The Olympics… sometimes I think I should switch back. I know Inumaki would. But it might be too late, now, I guess. And…
And what?
You want to puzzle out every part of Yuta Okkotsu. He’s such an enigma that every time you uncover something new about him, ten new questions pop up. You’re always reaching for answers, and he’s always creating more questions, and it’s an impossible dance woven into and around your choreography on the court.
But he’s not here for you to get to know him. He’s here to train you.
And train you do.
Even when Yuta is gone, you’re working yourself to the bone. His quietly approving nod when he returns to find you better than he left you has become something you crave, and even your teammates can sense the shift in you, mindset and otherwise.
“I get why he calls you Ace,” Ino says one day, leaning against the fence and spraying water into his face as a reprieve from the midday sun. “I don’t think I can keep up anymore.”
“Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” you grin, swiping the sweat from the back of your neck. “You never could.”
“Excuse you!” Ino gapes and turns the water bottle on you, the intent written clear in his mischievous smile. And that’s how Gojo and Shoko arrive to find him chasing you around the court, a trail of water behind you. Yuji’s also drenched, because he couldn’t help getting involved (I’ll save you!), and part of Megumi’s hair lies flat and soaked to his forehead. There’s absolute murder in his eyes. You are trying so hard not to laugh.
“I see we’re all acting our age,” Shoko says in that wry tone that always toes the line between amused and irritated. You can never quite tell which side she’s landed on.
“Coach,” Ino salutes, and promptly slinks off to the opposite corner of the court where Hakari is waiting.
“You’re all insufferable,” Shoko drawls, but Gojo only looks mildly wounded as he whines about not being invited to the water fight.
Official practices won’t start until the end of August, but you’ve been gathering pretty regularly as more of your teammates come back to campus, and Gojo and Shoko usually swing by for some informal instruction in the afternoons.
You shake out your hair, still damp from Ino’s water attack. You’re not complaining—it’s hot as balls, and you’d honestly dump a whole bucket of ice water over your head right now.
“Show me that backhand, Hoshi,” Shoko calls, headed toward the far court. Riko and the twins won’t be here until tomorrow, and Junpei is still at a camp out east, so the rest of you have been rotating all morning. Kirara’s paired up with Choso right now, who possibly has the strongest backhand on the whole men’s team, and she’s been making him serve to her for the better part of twenty minutes so she can slam it back at him.
Shoko takes his place and Choso bounds over to say hi to Gojo. You take the opportunity to grab your bag and guzzle more water because god, is it hot out here.
The sun is out in full force, glinting off the collection of pins on your tennis bag. Every tournament you go to, every new city, you find one, adding it to the line marching up and down your bag, now encroaching onto the front pocket. You pull your visor out as the reflections threaten to blind you.
When you turn, Gojo is standing there, looking over you appraisingly but saying nothing.
“Cat got your tongue?” you tease. A glance past him reveals that Choso has gotten distracted by Yuji, and he’s talking animatedly to his half-brother as Megumi idles beside them. Megumi and Choso have a weird relationship and you’re pretty sure the resentment is one-sided, but you haven’t bothered digging into the minefield that is Megumi’s list of qualms with people.
Gojo rolls his eyes—his sunglasses are tinted too dark to ever see his eyes, but he puts his entire head into the motion just so you know. “You’re improving. Fast. Here.” He grabs his own racket and heads to the other side of your court, gesturing for you to serve.
You can’t help the smile spreading across your face as you skip back to the service line. You love playing with Gojo. He and Shoko challenge you like your teammates haven’t been able to in a while (save Maki), and he’s so damn fast you swear he must have an extra pair of eyes that can see your moves before you make them.
It’s not the same thrill you get from playing with Yuta, but it’s a familiar joy, like a good run that leaves you feeling exhausted but satisfied.
You give him no warning before you serve, sending it in a perfect arc right to his racket. You’re not shooting to get him out on the first touch right now, like you always try to do with Yuta. You want to rally.
“Ah, don’t go easy,” Gojo calls, effortlessly flicking the ball back to you. “Makes me feel old.”
Your smile goes sharper as you tug your visor down on your head. “Your funeral, Coach.”
The first game goes by in a blink, sweat dripping into your eyes—love-love. Fifteen-love. Fifteen-all. Fifteen-thirty. Thirty-all. Forty-thirty. Game!
You twirl the racket in your hands, grinning as the two of you silently move in opposite directions around the net to switch sides. The serve is his, and rather than call love-love, Gojo yells dramatically, “Redemption!”
It is, in fact, redemption, because gets the point off the first serve. “To think I had mercy on you earlier,” you scoff, biding your time as he hurls another ball into your service box. You backhand it, and when Gojo plays it back to you, grinning, you hit him with a clean volley that slams into no man’s land, that elusive area between the box and the baseline. “Hah!” you crow as he fumbles for the ball and comes up short.
Gojo practically cackles. “Oh, you’re asking for it.”
You aren’t sure how much time passes, ignorant of the length of your shadows stretching across the ground, attuned only to the delicate balance of trash talk and high-level play you and Gojo are throwing back and forth.
It’s not until you hear Hakari’s low, impressed whistle that you realize that everyone else has gathered around you in a wide semicircle, all the attention on the court pinned on this impromptu duel between you and your coach.
“You got faster,” Choso muses.
“Ace,” Ino says emphatically.
Gojo spreads his arms wide, shrugging helplessly at Shoko and his gathered audience. “She’s murdering me. In cold blood! And you’re all accomplices!”
As dramatic as Gojo is, you’ve just caught him out with your fourth ace, so his reaction isn’t totally invalid.
You can’t help having a little fun with it, though.
In lieu of a response, you serve him a fifth ace, shutting down the fourth game of set three. “Aw, Coach. You really think so?” You give him a shit-eating grin. Gojo is panting. You’re dripping sweat onto the concrete.
Kirara and Yuji take the liberty of calling your points as the set goes on, your other teammates crowing support in varying degrees of volume (and with varying degrees of profanity). At one point, Gojo sends you diving for no man’s land, but you’re not close enough for the lunge. He dances victoriously to the other side of the court and Megumi loudly boos him from the sideline.
“Excuse me!” Gojo gasps, clutching at his heart. “The audacity. Have I done nothing for you?”
Shoko, not at all subtly, covers her mouth and says, “Boooooo.”
Gojo turns to gape at her.
“What?” she shrugs, looking around absently. “Who said that?”
Gojo looks at you mournfully. “I’m alone in this world.”
Maybe it’s a little mean to laugh.
By the time you win the set, six games to four, the both of you are exhausted. But you don’t think you could sleep right now if you tried.
It’s not often that you and one of your coaches play a full match, and even less common that you win. The few times you have, it’s been after long stretches of 5-5 sets, pushed to seven for the two-win margin.
Your skin feels electrified with the understanding of what this means, this tangible proof of your progress.
It was one thing for Gojo and Shoko to say there’s only so much they could teach you.
It’s another thing entirely to believe it.
—
“Heard you gave Gojo a little humbling yesterday,” Yuta says conversationally as he gives you a very substantial humbling with the most ridiculous slice you’ve ever seen. It’s a single cut through the air, elegant and sharp at the same time, starting in the air and ending around his waist as he puts a flawless backspin on the ball.
Instead of hitting it back, you snatch the ball out of the air. “Uh, pause. I’m learning,” you gesture vaguely to Yuta’s side of the court, “that.” You know how to slice, but not like that. You lob the ball back at him. “Okay, give it to me high.”
“Way to change the subject.”
You stick out your tongue in a show of great maturity. “Yes, I whooped his ass, and it was wonderful. Happy?”
“Very. Now you just have to get so many service breaks you end him in two sets.” He serves it high, a smooth arc that finds your racket easily as you raise it above your head. You slam it down with a turn of your wrist, trying to cut through the air the way Yuta did, and send the ball directly into the net.
“Fuck.” You shake your head, both at the botched hit and the concept of beating Gojo in two sets. You would have to get a significant number of service breaks, and it’s always harder to win a game your opponent serves. But it’s also so very like Yuta, to find you at the finish line of one goal and immediately give you a newer, more impossible one. “What did I do wrong?”
“Here.” You blink, and he’s beside you, gesturing for you to fix your grip on your racket. You step back to the line, raising your arm as if to receive a high ball.
His puts his hand on your elbow, guiding you through the motion, slow and precise.
It’s mid-July, but so early that the sun isn’t yet pounding down on your shoulders. Still, the moment he touches you, you’re warm all over, hyperaware of his breath near your temple and his calloused fingers choreographing your movement through the air.
“Right here,” he says, as you instinctively push your elbow back to allow for the rotation of your racket. “Keep it low and keep it forward. Just—flick, yeah. Good.”
“Oh,” you say lamely. Your words are a jumble in the back of your mind right now, utterly unreachable. “Uh, yeah.”
Yuta steps away, and with the absence of his warmth comes the return of your mental faculties. Jesus. This is not good. It’s not like you didn’t know Yuta was attractive. You just thought you had yourself under control enough to not—to not feel like this.
You shake out your shoulders, like you’re just getting the stiffness out of your muscles and not trying to forget his touch. He’s already circled back to the other side of the court, tossing a ball idly in one hand. “Ready?”
“Ready.” You’re going to lock in to training. You’re not going to pay attention to whatever the fuck just happened.
He serves another high ball, and you do exactly what he told you to do. High, low, keep your elbow forward—bam.
“Yeah!” Yuta shouts, taking it in stride and passing it back, and then you’re rallying almost subconsciously. “Jeez, Ace. Nobody learns that fast.”
You grin. “Guess I do.”
There’s a shriek in the distance, and Yuta freezes, entirely missing your ball as he spins toward the noise. “What was—”
“Ah,” you say. Because you know exactly what that was.
“WE’RE BAAACK!”
Three silhouettes scatter down the hill, increasingly loud and in varying degrees of chaos. Yuta’s worried frown fades into amused confusion as the twins dump their gear and skip on to the court, Riko on their heels.
“You’re early,” you grin as Riko barrels into you.
“Someone told me there was an Olympian down here, so.”
“Oh, so you’re not here because you love me?” You stick out your bottom lip, wounded, but the farce doesn’t last long because the twins are now boxing you in from both sides, crowing about how much they missed you.
You glance over Nanako’s shoulder, laughing as Yuta watches the four of you with a soft little smile. “Well, let me introduce you to the man of the hour, then.” You gesture for him to come over as the girls release you. “Yuta, this is Riko, Nanako, and Mimiko. Guys, this—”
“You’re Yuta Okkotsu,” Nanako gushes. “We know!”
Mimiko jabs her in the ribs with an elbow and hisses, “Don’t be weird.”
“They Googled you,” Riko informs him, and Yuta takes it all in stride, falling into easy conversation with the three of them. The sun’s higher in the sky now, heat waves rising from the concrete, and the others are cresting the hill, slowly filling the court with idle chatter and hitting balls back and forth.
“They stole your man,” Kirara remarks as she bounces a ball atop her racket. You roll your eyes, listening to Riko rambling (Is it true you can use a katana? We should sword fight!) and holding your racket flat about a foot over hers, bouncing her ball back down to create a little ball-bouncing vacuum. It’s one of the exercises you remember from your very earliest rec tennis camps—tennis ball sandwich.
Eventually the ball escapes the confines of your rackets and rolls over to Junpei, who’s idling by himself, watching Yuta with a kind of awed, timid expression.
“Yoshino, you’re back!” Kirara grins, bounding off to talk to him. You greet him with a wave and step back to observe the familiar chaos of the courts around you.
You’re going to have to start training late again, just to get the place to yourself. Not that you don’t love your teammates, but it’ll be hard to get Yuta one-on-one with everyone crowding him like this.
You single out Yuji and Megumi when they arrive, Yuji wide awake and bursting with energy, Megumi looking like he wants to crawl into a hole and sleep forever. So, the usual. You flag them down.
“Come play doubles,” you call.
Yuta raises a brow at you and Megumi frowns. “Against you guys?”
“Ye of little self confidence.” But he’s not wrong. Yuta is an Olympian, and he’s been training you. “Fine, Megumi with me. Get ready to lose, Yuta.”
You’re curious about what it would be like to actually play on the same side as Yuta in a doubles match, but for now, this will do.
“Your serve, you insane morning person,” Megumi calls, voice droll as he lobs a ball at Yuji.
“Yes, sir!”
Megumi groans.
Yuji serves the first game, and the only reason he and Yuta don’t win is because Yuji keeps getting distracted by Yuta’s moves and gushing over how cool he is.
“Itadori,” he says finally, after you’ve won game one and Megumi is smirking, all his morning exhaustion evaporated.
“Hm?”
Yuta only says, “Lock in.”
“Oh!” Yuji grins. “Okay. Sure thing, boss.”
Because yes, Yuta is a good sport, and he’s great with people, as evidenced by the gaggle of girls who ambushed him earlier. But he’s a menace on this tennis court, and he will not be caving easily.
You serve the second game, and it’s much more difficult, though you still manage to avoid a service break. Yuji, true to his word as ever, locks in, and you marvel at exactly how much of a threat he is. It’s how bright and easygoing he is that throws everyone off. He’s constantly underestimated, even in doubles when he’s got Megumi’s Scary Dog Privilege thing going on.
Once he and Yuta have figured out each other’s strengths, they lean into them hard, and you and Megumi are fighting to keep up. But Megumi is also a lethal player, entirely silent but also wholly unpredictable if you don’t know him.
Yuji knows him, anticipating and countering all his hits like it’s second nature. But Yuta does not, and that becomes very clear when Megumi goes from being entirely still to slamming a ball into the left service box in half a second, so narrowly inside the line that Yuta has no chance.
He grits his teeth, but there’s a hungry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He’s recognized a challenge.
Yuji and Yuta take the next game, and the next, and you’re 2-2. It’s nearing lunch, and you know you should probably let Yuji and Megumi get back to their own doubles work. This isn’t a tournament, after all.
“Wanna just do next game wins?”
“Trying to get off easy, I see,” Yuta returns coolly. But he nods, and tosses the ball back to Yuji to serve. “To seven?” It’s the usual tiebreak score for when a tournament match goes 6-6, and everyone nods, settling into place.
It’s not long before you’re both at six, and game point has even Megumi trash talking just a little. “Don’t get comfortable,” he says to Yuji, taunting.
“I’m very comfortable,” Yuji grins, and serves a fast one that you have to dive to return. It’s yours, and then Yuta slams it back to Megumi, and Megumi hurls a high ball that’s the perfect temptation for Yuji. He should let it go, but he doesn’t, because he has a chance.
His return goes just low, catching the very top of the net before toppling into your box. You dive, playing it back without thinking.
And Yuta lets the ball go. “What?” he tilts his head, amused. “That was a let. Why did you…”
“It’s college tennis, Yuta,” you grin. “That’s playable.”
“Shit!”
“Did we just win?” Megumi murmurs. “Jesus, we just won.” He glances at you, brow raised. “Not bad.”
You know you wouldn’t have if the rules in pro and NCAA tennis were the same. He would have slammed that low ball back at you, and you wouldn’t have had a shot in hell.
But a win is a win.
“That was awesome!” Yuji shouts, bouncing foot to foot excitedly. “Fushiguro, wasn’t that awesome?” Ever graceful in defeat.
“Uh-huh,” Megumi says, shaking out his wrists. Enthusiastic as ever. But your eyes are on Yuta, who’s just looking you as he twirls the racket in his hand.
“Not bad, Ace,” he says, just loud enough for you to hear across the court. “Not bad.”
—
When Yuta leaves the following week, it’s for the Generali Open in Austria.
“It’s only a 250,” he shrugs. “Wanna stay sharp.”
“Only a 250,” you mock, making your voice deeper. “Only a professional—”
“I don’t sound like that!”
You spend his absence training with Shoko, now that the whole team is back in action and the numbers are off. She seems quietly pleased by your progress, running unforgiving drills and correcting your new slice until it’s perfect.
“He’s been good for you,” she notes.
“He has.” You try and fail to fight down the blush, hoping Shoko will write off the heat in your cheeks as exertion. But she smiles, a small, private thing, and you figure nothing has really ever gotten past her shrewd observation.
It’s not as easy to stream the Generali as the more major tournaments, but you manage to follow most of Yuta’s progress online. He doesn’t do as well as he usually does, and it worries you a little. What if you’re taking too much time from his independent training? You need him, not the other way around. If he’s been getting rusty just because he’s given you so much of his summer…
Those nervous thoughts are still plaguing you at the end of July, knees tucked to your chest on the bench at the edge of the court. It’s sheltered by a metal canopy overhead, and currently it’s your only reprieve from the pouring rain.
It would be stupid to ruin your practice balls in the water pooling on the court, but something kept you out here even as you saw the warning storm clouds rolling in. The rain is soothing, loud, sheets of water that only barely mist you with the help of your jacket and the shelter overhead.
“Prime practice weather, huh?”
You jump. Yuta’s appeared beside you, the hood of a windbreaker pulled over his head, and he’s drenched. The rain was so loud you couldn’t hear his approach.
“You’re back!”
“I’m back,” he chuckles. “Why are you out here?”
“Why are you?” you return, shrugging as he takes his place on the bench beside you. A non-answer.
“Here.” Yuta gestures for you to hold out your hand. He presses something cool and round into your palm.
“What…?”
He’s avoiding your eyes now, gazing out at the rain as you were only moments earlier. You wonder how long he watched you as he approached, unguarded.
You unfurl your fingers to find a shiny enamel pin, a white flower with petals unfurling from a clustered yellow center. Beneath it is a red banner with ÖSTERREICH marching across in thin, gold lettering.
“Austria,” he says. In German, you gather. “It’s an edelweiss. I just thought… you know, your bag.”
Some absurd, wild feeling kicks up in your gut, the dancing chaos of a candle just lit.
He went out and found this for you. He noticed the pins on your bag, and he took the time to get this and bring it all the way here from Europe. Just to press it into your hand in the midst of a heavy rain. He didn’t have to come all the way out here, either. Could’ve waited for tomorrow morning.
“It’s beautiful,” you grin, holding it up to the faint light. “I… thank you.” You wait for him to look at you, and you’re staring at the bashful, hesitant Yuta now, not the professional tennis player version of himself.
Or are you? There’s something in his eyes that’s a touch more on the side of his athlete persona, something pleased and a little hungry.
The lines are starting to blur.
You tuck the pin into your pocket, unable to keep the smile off your face. Damn this boy.
You have to be reading too much into this.
“How was it? Austria, I mean,” you say, facing forward again. It’s easier like this, to speak staring out into the rain, your legs practically touching on the bench but not quite.
He sighs, resigned. “I don’t know. It was fine. I just… was off, this time. I should have won.”
“Gotta give someone else a chance sometimes,” you tease, a pleased thrum in your chest when you get a soft huff of breath out of him, a chuckle. “What was on your mind?”
He’s silent for a while. “I don’t know. There are some things I need to… figure out, I think.”
You hum, a quiet agreement, because yeah. You need to do some major figuring out, too.
“If you’re spending too much time here,” you start, though you don’t really want to say it. “I mean, if you want—I just mean it’s okay if you need to train me less. I know I’ve taken a lot of your time, and I wasn’t really thinking about how that could impact your career, which was selfish, and I—”
“No!” he says, and the volume of it takes you aback a bit. You pull your knees away from your chest, planting your feet on the ground as you turn to face him. “No, I—sorry. No, it’s not that at all. You’ve been helping.”
You must look unconvinced, because he continues, “Really! You’re… I actually feel like you’re a more challenging opponent than some of the pros, half the time. I mean, some of the guys at that 250 didn’t hold a candle to you, Ace.” His voice is softer now, back in control. “I mean that.”
“Oh,” you breathe. “That’s… that’s good. I’m glad.”
Your knees are touching, now, just barely. He’s warm. “Me too.”
You turn back toward the rain, feeling some combination of relief and confusion as you watch the water cascade over the vacant courts.
You imagine yourself out there, playing against Yuta. Losing, winning. Maybe he’s seeing the same game, somehow, making the same mental moves, maybe he’s internalized your playstyle just as much as you have his.
“Why do you play?” you murmur, and for a second you don’t think he hears; the only sound is the steady wash of rain on the pavement, the light pattern of your breathing.
But then he says, “When I was a kid, my neighbor was my best friend. We grew up together. Started learning tennis, playing with those little kid rackets and the short nets.” He smiles faintly, but his eyes are somewhere far away, on a kid’s tennis court in his childhood town. “I didn’t even want to learn, at first, but I was six and in puppy love and I’d have done anything she asked me to.”
“Rika,” you murmur, feeling as though you have to interject, have to let him know that you looked into it at least a little. Saying nothing would feel like a violation of his trust. He doesn’t ask how you know, doesn’t seem upset by the sound of her name on your lips.
“Rika,” he echoes. There is so much bittersweet affection in the single word that it almost hurts to hear. “We didn’t really mean to be… good. It just came so naturally to both of us, and suddenly we were these doubles child prodigies.”
Your imaginary tennis match morphs into another one, with a much younger Yuta, a shadow of a girl at his side. Making their way through the ranks, so young, so talented.
“We were teenagers when we got into the Olympics. And we were doing well, too. I remember her grabbing my hand after we won this one game, and she just said, Yuta, I think we’re gonna do it. I think we can actually win.”
His voice is strained, like something is stuck in the back of his throat, but he keeps going, so you don’t make a move to stop him. Something tells you he needs to say this as much as you need to hear it.
“It was a freak accident,” he murmurs. “Halfway through the tournament. She just… got a taxi, never got out of it.”
Slowly, subtly, you turn to look at him. The wind has shifted, blowing lighter droplets of water into your faces, a cool mist. And now you aren’t so sure if Yuta’s face is damp from the rain, like yours, or… well.
“Yuta,” you murmur. You take his hand without thinking too much about it. “I’m so sorry.”
He shrugs, swallows hard. “Yeah. Me too.” He laughs humorlessly, shakes his head a little as if to ward off the memory. “I kind of went off the grid for a while after that. Miguel found me, turned me into a singles player. I did singles for the 2024 Olympics. Didn’t get very far. I wasn’t enough, not alone. But, y’know, there’s next time.”
He finally looks at you, making no move to let go of your hand. And you know he doesn’t want hollow words or pity. He wants you to understand. And on some level, you think you do.
“Do you miss it?” you murmur. “Doubles.”
“Always.” He laughs a little, looking down at your intertwined hands. “It was my first love. Well, I mean… she was, really.” He sighs. “I went back to doubles for a while, in smaller tournaments, off the professional grid. With Inumaki. And I knew we were good enough to get back there—the Olympics, I mean.”
He worries at his bottom lip, and you squeeze his hand a little, before you can second-guess yourself. “But?” you ask, because you know Inumaki was never in the Olympics.
“It felt wrong to do doubles without her,” he shrugs. “Or it did, for a while. I just—I needed to figure things out for myself. I had to figure out if I still loved this sport if Rika wasn’t in it.”
For the love of the game or the love of the girl.
“I think Toge—Inumaki, I mean—I think he knew that. It was his idea that we split for a while, actually.” He shakes his head with a fond smile. “It’s funny. Something about Toge. When he tells you do something, you just… you really can’t say no.”
“I know people like that,” you grin, Maki’s face floating to the front of your mind. “He sounds like a good friend.”
“He is,” Yuta says immediately. “You should meet him. You’d get along.” He smiles.
Every time he smiles, you think you might be in a lot of trouble.
“And you?” he asks after a beat. “Why do you play?”
That’s a question you haven’t been asked in a long time. But the answer hasn’t changed, not in all your years of training and travel and tournaments. “It makes me feel alive. Like nothing else does.” It sounds silly when you say it aloud, but it’s true. “I tried every sport out there as a kid. It was a big city, big schools, and I remember being so little and telling my mom I wanted to make something of myself. Stand out.”
“Think you did a pretty good job,” he teases.
“Oh, hush.” But you’re smiling. You possibly haven’t stopped smiling, actually, in several minutes now. “I went to this community education tennis thing when I was like, five, six? Little Dora the Explorer tennis racket and everything. And I just loved it.” You shake your head fondly, remembering the early days of your tennis career, a roulette wheel of doubles partners, rec leagues and junior high and high school.
“Overachiever,” he says. “Planning out your whole life at six.”
“Says you.”
“I’m pretty sure if you’d asked me why I played tennis when I was six, I wouldn’t have said to make something of myself. I’d just say, oh, uh, Rika told me to.”
The idea of a little Yuta doggedly following Rika around, tennis racket in hand, discovering he was actually good at the game, makes you giggle. It’s a sweet thought. “I’m glad she did.”
He holds your gaze for a long, charged moment, and you wonder if that was the wrong thing to say. I had to figure out if I still loved this sport if Rika wasn’t in it.
But then he says, “Yeah. I am, too.”
The two of you sit there for a while in the rain, watching. His story plays over and over in your mind, bits and pieces overlapping and rearranging. Rika. Toge. Yuta, alone. Africa. Miguel.
“It’s late,” you say finally, when your phone lights up with a text from Nobara. “We should probably…”
“Right.” Yuta turns back to you, sheepish. “Yeah.” You know he stays with Gojo when he’s here, so it’s not far, but his place is in the opposite direction of yours from here. You stand, the rain having died down significantly in the time you were sharing the silence.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Your fingers wrap around the pin in your pocket, and though you should be wet and cold, you feel warm from the inside out. He nods, and you turn to go.
But then there’s a hand wrapped around your wrist. His grip is gentle, and when you turn to face him he looks surprised, as if his arm has moved of its own accord.
“Yuta?” you ask hesitantly.
“Come with me.”
“What?”
“To Cincinnati,” he says, avoiding your gaze. “I—you don’t have to. Obviously. It just… would be nice to have you there, and you could meet Toge then, and—”
“Yes.”
His face splits into a grin. “Yeah?”
Yuta Okkotsu at the Cincinnati Open, destroying everything in his path, a single-minded machine. You in the bleachers, holding your breath, analyzing his every move until he wins and you can shout as loud as he makes you feel.
You nod, his smile mirroring itself on your face. “Yeah.”
—
samurai: [1 Attachment]
samurai: your ticket
“I just don’t understand,” Nobara groans, slapping a palm down on Tsumiki’s kitchen table to punctuate her despair. “Sets? Yes. Match? Fine. But why is a game not an actual game? How is it a smaller thing than a set? That’s so stupid.”
She looks at you expectantly, and it takes a moment for the words to register. Your best friend is talking to you. Get your shit together, you think, placing your phone on the table.
“It’s points, games, sets, match,” you say, because you’ve had this conversation before. “You have points and sets and matches in volleyball. We just have one extra unit.”
“But why?” she demands, turning to Tsumiki for backup.
Tsumiki shrugs, sliding a bowl of popcorn across the table for you to intercept. It’s Sunday, which means it’s girls day, and you have it all down to a science by now. “I don’t pretend to understand the lawless world of tennis.” You nod gratefully as you accept the bowl, an uneven, green ceramic one that you’re pretty sure she mentioned Megumi making in junior high.
The Fushiguro in her is undeniable. Sometimes she’ll press her lips together or let her eyebrows dip in a way that just so precisely reminds you of Megumi, you have to do a double take. But in so many other ways, they’re nothing alike.
Tsumiki’s apartment is littered with books and plants and half-used candles, lived-in and cozy in the way of a harried grad student. There’s a volleyball on the floor by the couch, a pair of well-worn court sneakers near the door, but she never went pro.
She could have, easily. It’s no easy feat, captaining your team to the NCAA Championship. Nobara never stops talking about how Tsumiki could’ve won gold if she’d just let herself have one second of glory.
But as much as Tsumiki loves the court, she loves kids more, and her master’s in social work was never really in question. She’s content as you’ve ever seen her, clad in sweats and her familiar ponytail, moving about her space with the ease of someone who knows exactly who she is and where she’s going. It’s this that contrasts Megumi so deeply, you think.
He knows who he is, has maybe the most fleshed-out moral compass of any 21-year-old you’ve ever met, but you can see the conflict in him every time he’s on the court. The desire to be the best, to go pro, go Olympian. And the shadow of Toji Zenin hanging over his every serve. I will not be him, he’d said once, when the hour was so late it was early and all your filters had evaporated.
You won’t be, you’d said. You aren’t.
You think he’s getting closer to believing that, though, every day he’s here, every match he plays at Yuji’s side, every time he rolls his eyes at Gojo’s antics. This is a place for discovery.
You’ve been discovering a lot, lately.
samurai: if you still want to go. no pressure!! :)
You flip your phone over, feeling heat rush to your cheeks.
“Okay,” Nobara says, turning back to you and narrowing her gaze at your phone. “You’re usually much more excitable during our infinite variations of this argument. What’s wrong with you?”
It’s true. You’ve spent more than one late night preaching on the NCAA tennis point system. It’s not that weird! Four points in a game. You have to win six games in a set, and there’s three sets, and that’s match. That’s it!
But you can’t find it in yourself to spout the same vehement protests right now.
You can’t fucking stop thinking about Yuta.
And, well—this is Nobara and Tsumiki. So you say, “I can’t fucking stop thinking about Yuta.”
“OH MY GOD!” Nobara shrieks. “I knew it. Oh, I knew it!”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a problem!” you groan, planting your chin in your hand with your elbow on the table. “It’s not like I didn’t know I was attracted to him, but like, who wouldn’t be?”
Nobara raises her hand.
“Oh, shut up!”
“Alright,” Tsumiki says, pulling out a chair and settling in with a mug of tea. “Why is this bad? If you’re into him.”
“Why is it bad?” You gape at her. “It’s—he’s an actual, literal Olympian and he’s here to train me as a favor for Gojo. He’s not supposed—we’re not supposed to—”
“Says who?” Nobara asks, munching on a handful of her own popcorn. “He’s only a year older than you. He doesn’t actually teach here. You’re not on the same team. There’s no weird conflict of interest. Isn’t he literally only here for another month?”
“That’s another thing!” you cry. “Who knows if I’ll even see him again after this?”
“Where does he live?” Tsumiki asks.
Nobara doesn’t miss a beat. “Here. California.” You glare at her, and she waves her phone gleefully. “I love public records!”
“So… why wouldn’t you see him again?” Tsumiki asks gently.
“Because he lives an hour north, and when he’s done here he… he has to go focus on his own career. Right?”
Tsumiki looks, per usual, knowing. The strands of hair escaping her ponytail fall into her face as she tilts her head, studying you, and you feel laid bare. “Who are you asking?” she says, not accusing, but you know the question is rhetorical anyway.
You sigh, and look at Nobara. She’s going to have a field day with this, but you have to say it before his unanswered messages burn a hole through this kitchen table.
“He asked me to go to Cincinnati with him.”
Nobara fully knocks over her chair with how fast she stands up, gripping the table so tightly her knuckles are white. “He what?” She throws her hands in the air, then abruptly turns around. She takes a long, deep breath and goes to right the chair before turning back to you, composed. “Girl. You’re telling me that this man, who spends every waking minute of his free time with you, invited you on a cross-country trip with him, and you still think he’s doing this just because Gojo asked him to?” She plants her hands on her hips. “Please think for a moment. A very long moment, preferably, because if you open your mouth and say yes I’m going to throw so much popcorn at you.”
“Tsumiki,” you grumble, but she just grins and sits back in her chair, making no move to intercede.
“I will get Maki on the phone right now,” Nobara threatens. “Actually, I’m gonna. You were gonna tell her anyway, right?” She waits for you to nod before she grabs her phone, and it’s ringing on speaker in a split second. You can’t even use the time difference to object, because it’s mid-afternoon for Maki.
“Maki. Love of my life. Woman of my dreams.”
“You want something,” Maki sighs.
“Oh, you know me so well. Can you tell your beloved roommate she’s being stupid?”
“Yeah.” Maki doesn’t miss a beat. About?”
“Okay,” you call, chucking a piece of popcorn at Nobara. “First of all, have you no faith in me?”
“Not when it comes to men,” Maki says. “That’s what this is about, right?”
You throw your hands up in the air, glancing at the phone, Nobara, Tsumiki. “I don’t actually know why I talk. Why do I tell you things? All of you are weird and psychic and knowing. Just tell me what to do with the rest of my life, at this point. I know you know.”
“You avoid talking about him,” Maki says. “Which is a conscious decision. If you talked about him all the time like you wanted to, I’d be suspicious, right? So you did the opposite and thought I wouldn’t notice that you never talk about the guy you’re spending all of your time with.”
“I hate how well you know me.”
“False. Anyway, Nobara’s right. You’re overthinking this. You don’t need to make up reasons to stop yourself from falling for someone. You’re just nervous, which is also fine, but don’t lie to yourself about it.”
A grin spreads across your face, despite how called out you feel right now. “That’s reaaal rich, coming from you,” you say in a sing-song voice.
“Oh my god,” Nobara says, putting the phone down. “Did she pine over me? Of course she pined over me. Maki, that’s so romantic.”
“I don’t know why I speak, either,” she drawls. “Look, you can make a move, or you can not. I promise you the world isn’t going to blow up either way.”
She makes it sound so easy. But you aren’t even sure how you feel. “I don’t know if I—do I even know him well enough to have feelings for him? Is it just an attraction thing? I don’t know!”
“Does it matter?”
There’s a question.
Does it?
“You’re not proposing,” Tsumiki points out. “You’d just be expressing interest. If he also expresses interest, hooray, you can figure it out from there. Maybe it’s a fling. Maybe it’s more. You won’t know until you just… do it.”
“Oh, hey, Tsumiki,” Maki says. “How are you?”
They proceed to have an entirely normal conversation while you have a silent crisis at Tsumiki’s kitchen table. Yuta is a brilliant tennis player and a genuine person. He’s funny and thoughtful and he got you a fucking edelweiss pin from Austria. He confided in you. He told you about Rika. He held your hand in the rain.
He looked at you like a challenge, without the net between you as context.
Maybe it’s only physical. Maybe it’s not. You just know you’re drawn to Yuta Okkotsu like a bird to the sky. And you cannot let it eat you alive.
“Earth to lover girl,” Maki calls from the phone, and you shake yourself out of it.
“Huh?”
“I asked about the team. Are we looking good for Kyoto?”
Ah. There’s only about a week and half between Maki’s return and the Kyoto Tech Invitational.
“Invitational” is a strong word, really. It’s very informal, an annual preseason tournament with the school just up the coast. Though it’s always a good way to get back into external competition, you know it wouldn’t be possible with any other school. There are so many connections between Kyoto and Kaisen.
For one, their women’s team is coached by the twins’ dad, Gojo’s old doubles partner. Mimiko and Nanako opted not to attend the same school despite their obvious shoo-in status, because I refuse to be a nepo baby and I cannot handle Dad constantly looking over my shoulder, god!
Geto and Gojo might be the best of (more than) friends, but the assistant coach at Kyoto hates Gojo more than anyone you’ve ever known. It’s kind of hilarious.
“I think we are,” you say honestly. “Megumi and Yuji are on fire. Choso got better over the summer. Even the younger kids are really hitting their stride right off the bat. Riko’s been training with Kirara on the side, I think, and it’s showing.”
“Good.” Maki’s sister also goes to Kyoto Tech. She takes destroying her very seriously. “Yeah, good. Okay, I gotta run. Are you okay with your Yuta crisis, or do we need to figure that out?”
“No,” you say. “I mean, yeah. No, yeah. I—got it.”
“Very convincing,” Maki says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
But the more you think about it, the more you think you’re right. You’ve got it.
You’re going to train with Yuta Okkotsu until you can hold your own against him. And then, before he leaves at the end of the summer, you’re going to tell him you want to see him again.
Then the ball’s on his side of the court, and if you’ve read this wrong, you don’t have to spend the rest of the summer awkwardly avoiding the topic.
It’s a plan. You like plans. All you need to do is survive one more month.
You’ve got this.
—
The sun is halfway down when you traverse the hill this time, your shadow long in the waning light. It’s been great to have your full team back, but a little overwhelming to train with Yuta while all of them are watching. The two of you have taken to meeting up closer to eight, when the floodlights come on and the courts are mostly abandoned.
Yuta is already there, bouncing a ball off the fence. He catches it when he sees you, smiling. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
You’ve done exactly what you promised yourself you were going to do. The past few days, you haven’t let yourself think about Yuta in any context other than the game.
Except when your gaze catches on the new pin on your tennis bag.
But for the most part, you’ve locked it down, thrown yourself into the game. And it’s working. Steadily, you’re getting closer and closer to his level.
You fall into the training session the same as always, trading banter back and forth, running drills, honing your backhand and slice and serves and that lethal ace that’s only gotten more inevitable since you started working with Yuta.
About an hour and a half has passed by the time you break for water, but you’re still buzzing with energy, electrified by the unmatched feeling of playing someone who challenges you, meets you, in every way.
“Mock set?” you ask, not wanting to stop. It’s a little late to do a whole match, but six or seven games to four points can’t hurt.
You’ve done it many times before.
You’ve just never won. Not a whole set, just you and Yuta, alone.
“Let’s do it,” he says, his eyes bright with adrenaline and the love of the game. You know he feels the same as you right now. Desperate to keep going, keep playing, keep growing.
“Love-love,” you call. And you’re going.
High. Low. Sharp. Serves and aces and faults, backhands and dives and slices, points and points and points. Game one is yours. Game two is his. He gets a service break on game three, and you fight him for it on game four, getting one right back.
Getting a service break on Yuta Okkotsu is no small thing. You feel electric.
“Don’t get comfortable,” he says, an echo of Megumi’s taunt on the court the other day.
He sends a nasty fastball to you in the fifth game, and you pull the very slice he taught you. Forward, low, put your legs into it. Your game. “Me? Never.”
He sends an ace just like yours just inside the line at the end of the sixth.
Next game wins.
“Set point,” you pant, grinning as you shove wayward strands of hair behind your ears. You can do this. You can beat Yuta Okkotsu.
“Have at it, Ace.” His tone is light and lilting, an unspoken taunt: You think you can pull this off?
“Oh, I will.”
Love-love turns into fifteen-love. Fifteen-all, fifteen-thirty, thirty-all, forty-thirty. Game point.
You position yourself on the service line, breathe once, deep, and serve.
The rally stretches well into the double digits, and you lose track of how many times it’s soared across the net when you see it—your chance.
It’s coming at you high, and you know in the moment you’re going to end it right now.
You wind back with your right arm, meet the ball in the air, and slam it.
No man’s land.
“Game!” you shout victoriously. “Holy shit. Game.”
Sweat pools along the small of your back, plasters loose strands of hair to your face as you lean forward with your hands on your knees, exhausted. You look up at Yuta through the glare of the floodlights, wishing you’d worn your visor despite the lack of sun. There’s some cocky, stupid taunt on the tip of your tongue, waiting to tease him for losing to you after so much trash talking.
But when you lock eyes, there’s something you don’t recognize in his expression—something that has you standing straight up, crossing to the edge of the court to meet him on the other side of the net. The shadows of his face seem sharper, darker. He starts toward you in tandem, meeting you where the net divides your territories. The muscles of his arms are outlined in sweat and manufactured light, and you force yourself to look away, back to his face, to the subtle curve of his lips and the darkness of his irises.
“I won,” you grin, a lame claim to victory—your initial riposte has been buried under whatever strange thing has taken over Yuta’s gaze.
“You did,” he says. His voice is almost hoarse—husky from physical exertion, probably, and you’re about to comment on it when he drops his racket to the ground, not even breaking eye contact with you.
You have never seen him treat his tennis racket with so little regard.
Is he upset with you? He’s not a poor sport, and you know you won that match fair and square—
He steps forward so suddenly that you take a step back, right up against the cool chain link of the court’s walls. His hand comes up to grip the metal just beside your head. You can’t look away. He’s got the same intensity now that he does at match point, a relentless attention that you’re too afraid to break.
“Yuta?” you whisper. Any louder and something in the air will shatter.
“You won,” he says, leaning down so that the words are breathed against the shell of your ear. Arms at your sides, your racket slips the remaining few inches to the ground with a dull thunk.
And now you know what it is, this look, this hunger. Because you feel it too, with his breath on your skin and the overwhelming sense of his body looming just inches away from your own, his heat a strange, sharp contrast to the metal of the fence at your back.
“I did,” you say as his other hand comes to rest at your waist, sending a ripple of heat up your spine. He pulls back ever so slightly to look you in the eyes again, and then his gaze floats down to your mouth. It doesn’t flicker between your lips and your eyes, just shamelessly moves to your mouth and stays.
So you grab him by the sweat-stained fabric of his tank top and yank him down toward you, crashing your lips into his with the force of a flawless backhand, and there’s no court or fence or balls or rackets or air. It’s all heat, any pretense of professionalism or semblance of denial shredded at your feet, sweaty skin against sweaty skin and desperate exhales against hungry lips.
“Yuta,” you gasp between stolen breaths, because it’s the only word you know. You’re formless, shapeless, intangible, and he’s all you can feel, all you’ve ever felt.
His lips are just behind your ear, now, breath hot on your neck, one hand on your waist, and you’re on fire. “You’re amazing,” he whispers. Something shoots down your spine, not a shiver but a bolt of electricity.
Tennis has always been the thing that makes you feel the most alive.
But this? Oh.
You didn’t know you could feel like this.
“You’re the one who trained me,” you murmur, fingers finding their way to his hair, his back, his neck. “It’s just—”
He silences you by slamming his lips back into yours, and when he pulls back to let you breathe it’s only by millimeters. “Don’t,” he breathes. “Don’t be humble.”
It’s not a request, but it’s not a demand, either. It’s a strange middle ground, and you find yourself grabbing him by the shoulders before you know what you’re doing, pushing your weight forward into his.
“Wh—”
In the span of a second, you’ve pushed him back into the fence, and now you’re the one caging him in, your smirk a challenge as you look up at him beneath the floodlights. Don’t be humble.
“Fine,” you say, and this time one hand takes him by the jaw, the other gripping the fence as you pull him into you. Air is no object. You’re breathing each other now.
He whispers your name like it’s his greatest conviction.
At some point, the floodlights flicker and go out. It’s late.
You don’t care.
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a/n: GOD I'M SORRY november is a particularly crazy time in my line of work but now i'm back with the yuta bug after execution (how could i not be)
that fence part was the first thing I wrote for this fic like legitimately ten+ months ago and i still don't know what came over me tbh
summary: at the division one level, tennis is more than a sport. it’s your livelihood, and with your doubles partner maki training overseas for the summer, you know you need to step up your game for your last season. luckily for you, your coach has connections. and who better to train you than a rising star olympian? over the course of the summer, you’ll push each other to your breaking points, and maybe farther. set by set, day by day, you start to untangle the mystery that is yuta okkotsu, the man he is off the court and the force he is on it. you might have finally met your match. but just like always—it’s all in the name of the game.
content: completed. 38.3k words. f!reader, warnings preceding each chapter, yuta's an olympic tennis player, you're a d1 tennis player, NOBAMAKI CANON, yuta is a little feral sometimes, he's really intense about tennis, and you, unhinged toge, coach gojo, coach shoko, satosugu is there in every universe, tennis makes no fucking sense, why are the d1 rules so different than the pro rules, wii sports would never do me like this, no use of y/n, sfw, gratuitous use of italics and also em-dashes and also swearing
directory
🎾 // set one: to stand alone
set two: stay sharp
set three: work-life balance
match point: a double endeavor // 🎾
summary: when you find yourself in need of an emergency trip to the local vet clinic, it's late and the sign on the door is flipped to closed. luckily for you, animal science student megumi fushiguro is still around, and he's willing to help you and your dog out—and maybe get a little more than he bargained for in the process. but he's not used to letting people in, and you've never been particularly patient. when winter rolls around, will you be spending the holidays alone?
content/warnings: 20.7k words. complete. sfw. f!reader, you have a dog, megumi has his dogs, they are unbearably cute, megumi doesn't know how to communicate for shit, language, no use of y/n, christmas yay!!, aged up characters, including riko, she's in college, and she's a menace, (light) angst with a happy ending, mentions of deceased parents (typical fushiguro canon), soft, fluff, you know when your sister psychoanalyzes you at the kitchen table, car crash, alcohol, reader studies environmental science but can't keep plants alive for SHIT, so much unnecessary pining, gratuitous overuse of italics and em-dashes
note: this takes place in the same universe as out of my mind, but you don't have to read that to know what's going on here! though it may help with some context. happy hella late birthday megumi fushiguro you will always be famous
PART I // BATMAN & ROBIN
IT’S TEN O’CLOCK and dark when Batman decides to cause problems.
Batman, of course, being your three-year-old German shepherd mix, the one currently whining and staring up at you with big, dark puppy eyes while he holds one paw up limply.
“Oh, little buddy,” you sigh as you squat down in front of him, despite the fact that he hasn’t been little in a very long time. He’s been restless all night, so you caved and took him on a late night walk, and it’s so dark you can’t tell what’s wrong with his paw even in the glow of the phone flashlight.
God, fuck. Where’s the closest vet? The one in the city is definitely closed. You’re fairly certain there’s a smaller one somewhere on the outskirts of the JU campus, though, one that the pre-vet students use for clinicals.
“C’mon, champ,” you murmur, tugging gently on Batman’s leash. “Let’s go get you checked out, huh?”
The early September air is chilly, a little bit of a bite to it. You’re glad the temperatures haven’t yet dropped below freezing, so you don’t need to let your car defrost before going. “Up,” you say, patting the passenger seat with the door held open for Batman.
You punch the clinic into maps and pull out of your suburban street into the busier roads. It’s not far, thankfully, and you make a beeline for the door with Batman on your heels, not noticing until you’re right in front of it that the massive sign hanging on the door is flipped to CLOSED.
“No,” you groan, leaning forward and pressing your forehead to the cool glass of the closed door. You close your eyes, wondering what the fuck you’re gonna do, and then—thump.
You nearly jump out of your skin, eyes flying open and gaze raising to meet the amused eyes of a guy on the other side of the door, who’s trying and failing to suppress a smile that feels a little teasing. Oops.
You step back and wave sheepishly, and the boy unlocks the door and swings it open, taking in the sight of you and your limping dog.
“I’m sorry,” you blurt. “I know you’re closed and it’s some ungodly hour on a Tuesday, I just didn’t know what else to do—”
“It's fine,” he says, waving it off. “I’m just cleaning up, it’s not a hassle. Come on.” Batman has no qualms about following the guy through the open door, so you follow, glancing around the small clinic. It’s pretty sparse, save for the bulletin board overflowing with pet photos on one wall.
“Fushiguro,” the guy says in introduction, glancing back over his shoulder at you. He’s got deep blue eyes that match his dark scrubs, and his hair sticks out every which way in a manner that feels intentional. He must be around your age. It takes you a beat to remember yourself and give him your own name, stuttered out as you pass into the back exam room.
There’s a white coat tossed haphazardly over a spinning chair, and the guy—Fushiguro—picks Batman up like he weighs nothing and situates him on the metal table.
“Hey, bud. What’s your name?” he asks, scratching behind Batman’s ears. Your dog is usually weary of vets, but today his tail pounds on the metal of the table as he raises his head to sniff at Fushiguro’s face.
“Batman.”
Fushiguro’s gaze snaps to you and he blinks, evidently thinking you’re joking. “No.”
“Yes.” You hold your index fingers up above your head to imitate your dog’s pointy ears. “Batman.”
“Oh. My god,” he says. “And what, you’re Robin?”
“I am not the sidekick in this situation.”
“Batman dragged you out here at eleven on a school night. You absolutely are the sidekick.”
You scoff, moving up to the table and stroking Batman’s fur. “Am I just a sidekick to you, little guy?” you coo. “You wanna be a hero so bad?” He noses happily at your palm.
Fushiguro side-eyes you, half-grimacing as he grabs Batman’s paw to look at it. He doesn’t seem to mind, which is honestly a shock. He hates people touching his paws, even you. “You baby talk your dog?”
“You judge your patients?”
“Course not,” Fushiguro says, smirking as he looks back at you. “Just their owners.”
You roll your eyes but can’t help the huff of laughter, and his dark eyes reflect the fluorescent overhead light as he turns away. He’s undeniably attractive—you don’t remember seeing him around campus.
“You go to JU?” you ask, and he nods.
“Sophomore. Pre-vet. D’you?”
“Nah, Kaisen.” Your school is a lot smaller than the neighboring Jujutsu University. They’ve got something of an athletic rivalry with Kaisen College, but you really don’t care. “Environmental science.”
“You know everything there is to know about trees, or what?” His tone is teasing, and you know he doesn’t mean anything by it. The fact is you do know more about trees than normal college students probably should. Doesn’t mean you can keep plants alive for shit, though.
You’d guess there’s actually a fair bit of crossover between your course of study and a pre-vet student’s bio track, but you say, “I specialize in rare long grasses, actually.” It comes out so deadpan that he glances at you, brows knit together, trying to gauge if you’re being serious. You only last a second before you crack under his scrutiny, and he shakes his head and huffs as he turns back to Batman, who is now trying to lick Fushiguro’s nose.
“Excuse me,” he says. This only seems to encourage the dog kisses, but Fushiguro decides to just ignore them. He hums, grabbing a pair of tweezers and squinting as he moves to pull something out of Batman’s paw. “Just a splinter. The pad of a dog’s paw is one of the most sensitive parts of their body, so it’s not surprising he was so worked up about it.” You watch as he pulls out a thin sliver of wood, probably from stepping on some splintering twig, and drops it into a tray on the table.
You watch as your dog drops his paw back to the table and stands up, tail wagging at lightning speed, like nothing was ever wrong. He jumps off the table before Fushiguro can grab him and bounds over to you, rubbing himself along the outside of your leg like a giant cat.
“How much do I owe you?” you ask, pulling out your card, but he waves you off.
“It was literally a splinter.”
“But—”
“Honestly, it’d be more work to boot up the payment system again anyway. Don’t worry about it.” He holds your gaze, and you can’t tell if he’s lying about the payment system or not, but you slide your card back into your wallet without complaint.
Something passes between you, some weird spark of recognition—not that you’ve met before. You know you haven’t. But you don’t typically have this kind of easy banter with strangers. Something about this guy intrigues you, and you don’t particularly want to stop talking to him.
But you’ve already kept him past close, and you need to get home.
The moment breaks when Fushiguro clears his throat, leaning over to grab something off the counter. “Right. Well, give me a call if he starts limping again, but he should be alright.” He holds out a hand and you realize he’s offering you a business card, weirdly professional for a student.
M. FUSHIGURO
Veterinary Technician Trainee, JU
His number and email are printed beneath it in small sans serif lettering.
“Oh, you’re fancy.” You raise a brow at him, tucking the card into your jacket pocket. “Thank you. Seriously.”
“Well, who am I to refuse Batman?” he says wryly. He walks you to the door, and you try not to think too much of it—he just needs to lock up behind you, probably.
Before you slip out, he leans down and pats Batman on the head, earning a happy little tail-wag in response.
“Drive safe, Robin,” he calls, and you groan at the nickname as you unlock your car.
At home, you key his number into your phone and save the contact as fushiguro (cute vet). You sit there for way too long debating over whether you should text him—Batman’s fine, and it’s late, and he gave you a business card. Not exactly an invitation to flirt, tempting as that might be.
But you really want to.
“Should I text him?” you ask your dog, who’s decided to curl up right beside your bed and look up at you, waiting for an invitation. Your twin bed is not big enough for this and he knows it, but he always seems to think he’s a smaller dog than he really is.
Batman, unhelpfully, tilts his head at you, his perky ears flapping with the motion.
Maybe it’s because it’s past eleven and it’s dark out and you’re exhausted and you don’t have the best sense of judgment right now. Maybe it’s because Fushiguro’s just really cute.
“You’re right,” you say, nudging Batman with a socked foot. “No use waiting. Say cheese.”
It’s kind of embarrassing how you sit and stare at the screen for two minutes, waiting for him to answer. Batman snorts, like he’s making fun of you, and you lock your phone and toss it on the bedside table. “Oh, don’t start.”
Your roommate and best friend, Setsuko Sasaki, is studying abroad in Japan for the semester. It’s been lonely, strange without her occupying the second bedroom of your little rented townhouse. You’d like to say this is why you’ve resorted to talking to your dog, but that would very much be a lie, because you’ve always done this. Sometimes, when she’s home, Suko adopts a gruff, low voice and answers for him.
You jump when your phone buzzes and make yourself count to three before checking the screen.
fushiguro (cute vet): don’t mention it. always had a soft spot for batman, anyway.
fushiguro (cute vet): his sidekick’s alright too.
“Oh, he likes you,” you tell Batman. “Wingman. Thanks, little buddy.”
you: well, send a bat signal if you’re ever in mortal peril and i might show up
After that, you try to push Fushiguro to the back of your mind. He doesn’t go to Kaisen, so it’s not like you can stalk him in the university directory. You have no reason to run into him around town. As the semester ramps up and you fall back into your routine of classes and exams and friends, you don’t think too much about the cute vet tech who happened to be around that one night.
Or, you don’t for a grand total of six days.
You’re on a jog with Batman, afternoon sun making up for the fall chill in the air that’s hung around since it stormed last night. You don’t intend to stop, but Batman abruptly sticks his nose in the dirt about halfway through your run and refuses to move.
“Dude.” You backtrack and see that he’s discovered a couple pairs of dog prints, pressed faintly into the damp earth. “Oh, you smell friends, huh?” He tugs you forward, following the scent of these other dogs. “Hey!”
The thing about having a massive German shepherd mix, even one as docile as Batman, is that he is inarguably a lot stronger than you. So you don’t really have much of a choice but to stumble along after him as he bounds across the grass and comes out on the other side of the path—you don’t normally come this way, because there’s a dog park over here and he gets way too excited.
But today he’s on a mission, and you only see two other dogs in the fenced-in park—two huge balls of fluff, one white and one black. “Fine,” you say begrudgingly, undoing the gate and letting Batman off his leash. “Go play. But we aren’t staying long.”
He bounds off toward the other dogs while you latch the gate behind you, and then a familiar voice has you spinning around with your eyes wide. “Bat signal wasn’t me,” Fushiguro says, raising both hands in a gesture of innocence. “They did it.” He points at the other dogs, who are now engaged in a butt-sniffing circle with yours.
“Fushiguro!” You grin, making your way over to him. Once the other two dogs have deemed Batman a worthy playmate, they move on to you, sniffing at your palms and circling around you until the black one jumps up and nearly knocks you over with the force of it. “Oh, hello!”
“Kuro,” Fushiguro chides, rushing forward to tug at his collar. “Hey. Down.”
“It’s okay,” you promise through a fit of giggles as Kuro tries to basically hug you. “Oh, you’re cute, aren’t you? Hi, Kuro.”
Fushiguro huffs out a breath of relief when Kuro finally gets down. “That’s Shiro,” he says, gesturing to the white dog, who is now chasing Batman around the park. “Think she’s found a friend.”
“He dragged me all the way here,” you tell Fushiguro. “Guess he missed you or something.”
“Just him?”
You grin. “What, you think I was out here pining after you?” He only smirks in response. “I don’t even know your name, M. Fushiguro. What good is a business card without your first name on it?”
He hums, shoving his hands into his pockets, considering. “Guess.”
“Guess,” you echo. “Okay. Um. Michael.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Max.”
“Nope.”
“Um, Maverick.”
“What the hell?” He looks at you with furrowed brows. “Who in their right mind would name their kid—”
“Okay, hey,” you interrupt, holding up your hands. “I just watched Top Gun, okay? What do you want from me?”
“M—”
“Nope, out of tries for today. Three strikes, you’re out.” He shrugs, wholly unaffected, like this is just how the world works and he’s got no say it in whatsoever.
You gape at him, planting your hands on your hips in affront. “I hope you know I will be insufferable every single day until I’m right.”
Batman trots back over, prancing between you and Fushiguro until he crouches down to pet him. “You come here a lot?” you ask, glancing around the empty park. “I’ve never seen you here. Or your dogs. I think I’d remember giant balls of fluff like that.”
“Yeah, not often,” Fushiguro says, pushing back to his feet. “But Kuro’s been so restless all day. Had to let him run his energy down somehow.” The dog in question is chasing his own tail in circles while Shiro looks at him, unimpressed. “You live over here?”
“Few blocks out, yeah.” Your place is between the two campuses, an easy walk to both places because Suko takes Japanese classes at JU. Apparently Fushiguro doesn’t live too far away, either, just on the other side of the skate park where you know your friend Hajime hangs out all the time.
By “hangs out,” you mean he probably (definitely) buys weed there, but that’s not your business. Maybe he and Fushiguro know each other—they both go to JU. But Hajime’s a senior, so probably not.
You don’t get the chance to ask because Fushiguro’s phone rings, and he sighs and answers it with a glance at you that might be apologetic or might be mildly irritated. Hard to tell with him.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” he says gruffly. “Okay. See you.” He hangs up and tucks his phone back into his pocket, then whistles for the dogs. “Time to go.”
“Good to see you,” you blurt before he can turn away. He seems a little taken aback, but you don’t break eye contact, and you think he might be on the brink of a smile.
“You too, sidekick.”
—
After that, the two of you start texting more often, gradually moving from photos of your dogs to real conversation. And you keep your promise to be insufferable about finding out his name. You send him new M-names every day, never seeming to get any closer to the truth. For his part, he refuses to call you anything but Robin, cementing your existence as a superhero sidekick and nothing more.
you: new theory
you: the M stands for mr
you: monsieur
you: m’lord
He dislikes the messages in response, and you send him a teary-eyed emoji and hope the guilt is enough to get him to tell you.
It is not.
You and Fushiguro are in some sort of convoluted orbit around one another, sometimes colliding, sometimes drifting away. There’s really no reason you should keep stumbling across him, considering you go to different schools, live in different places, study different things.
But after that first day at the dog park, you might take Batman there a little bit more often.
Every time you talk, Fushiguro starts to take up more and more headspace. You find yourself searching for his flash of ink-dark hair, spiky and disheveled, in every crowd. Every set of fading prints in the grass or mud might be his, might be Shiro’s or Kuro’s. It’s stupid, how much you’re thinking about this boy.
At some point you start dragging your friends out to the coffee shops between your two campuses to do work, rather than the one in the student center. You justify it to yourself with the half-assed excuse that if you run into your friends less, you’ll get more work done, but really you’re just hoping he’ll be there. And your friends are happy to oblige, especially Riko, if it means she’ll get a glimpse of this mystery vet man you don’t shut up about.
Riko’s a year below you at Kaisen, but you know her from back home. She’s a frenetic ball of energy and indignation, and she’s fully prepared to go to every coffee shop in a ten-mile radius for the purposes of what she calls “the mission.”
But the coffee at the second place you try is actually god-tier, and you wind up there regularly after that, hunkering down to grind out your assignments in your spare time. It’s there that he finds you, sliding into the seat right across from yours so abruptly that you nearly fall out of your chair—your noise-canceling headphones really block out the entire world. He smirks as you sheepishly tug them down around your neck, glaring.
“Warn a girl, Jesus!”
“I did,” he drawls, taking a sip of his coffee. “Twice.”
“Boo.” You kind of forgot about your own drink because you were so into your work, and you pick it back up now, mostly for something to do with your hands. “Well, hi. What’re you up to?”
“Same as you, I think.” He nods at your laptop. “Mind if I hang out here?”
“You certainly can, but you’ve just stolen someone’s seat and you might have to fight for your life when she gets back from the bathroom.” His eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and as if on cue, Riko is beelining toward the table from across the room.
“Well hello, Mr. Seat Thief. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Fushiguro seems to be gauging Riko, and you realize this is kind of the first look he’s gotten into your private life outside of your dog, and you’re irrationally nervous about it. But he scoots over and grabs a chair from the next table over, giving Riko a mocking bow in response.
“Better?”
Riko nods, and then grabs his coffee and takes a long drag out of it. He doesn’t object, and that should have been your warning—you can see when the bitterness of it hits her all at once, her face twisting in some combination of shock and despair and mild outrage.
“Oh my god,” you say as Riko grabs her water bottle and chugs to get the taste out of her mouth, aggressively shoving Fushiguro's coffee back toward him. “Of course you drink coffee black, you fucking loser.”
“What, you dump six cups of sugar in yours? That’s not coffee.” You flip him off instead of justifying this with a real response.
“I was gonna use that as payment for your crimes,” Riko gasps dramatically, leaning over the table, “but I was instead punished. You’re in my debt now.” She glares at him fiercely, turning up her nose, before abruptly abandoning the bit and grinning at him. “I’m Riko, by the way.”
He snorts, but a very small hint of a smile appears in a corner of his mouth. “Fushiguro.”
Riko nods and glances from him to you, as if to say really? This guy? You can already hear the analysis she’ll be giving you on the way home. Easy on the eyes, I get it, but does he like, have a personality?
“I did research,” you tell Fushiguro, nudging Riko’s shin under the table in warning. “On you.”
“You stalked me online, is what you’re saying.” You’re learning that he’s not a very expressive person. He treats laughs and smiles like rare currency, and everything you need to know about what he’s thinking is in the tiniest shifts—a downturned brow, a blink, a tilt of the head. You’re still learning, but you like to think you’ve got it down enough to know that this doesn’t actually bother him, despite the resting angry face.
“Yes,” you say, shameless. “Except when I typed in Fushiguro and your school, I got all these results for the editor of your campus paper. You have a sister?”
If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. “Tsumiki, yeah.”
He doesn’t offer more, so you push. “Older?” You already know the answer, but best let him believe the depth of your internet stalking is shallower than it really was.
“Two years. She’s a senior.”
“Cool. I don’t know a ton of siblings that go to the same school.”
“You’d be surprised,” he sighs. “My cousin and her twin sister both go there, too. And one of my roommates’ half-brothers.”
“Convenient, I guess,” you concede. “Sibling discount or something?”
“Nah, but it was easier this way,” he says, pulling a textbook out of his bag. “Go—uh, our legal guardian works around here anyway.”
Riko raises a brow but doesn’t ask, which is a remarkable show of restraint for her.
Legal guardian. Parents aren’t in the picture, then. You want to ask but you don’t, not yet.
The three of you buckle down and get some work done, casually exchanging conversation over the next few hours, and eventually Fushiguro has to head out. “Rehearsal,” he says.
“Rehearsal?” Riko asks, glancing at you as if you know what he’s talking about. You don’t, but you have some absolutely ridiculous mental image of Fushiguro in choir and you almost laugh out loud.
But he just says, as if it’s nothing at all, “Oh, yeah, I’m in a band.”
“What?” you nearly shout, jumping out of your chair so fast it pushes across the floor with a scrrcck. “You’re in a band? You didn’t think to tell me this before? What’s it called? Can I listen—”
“Nope.”
“But—”
“Nice to meet you, Riko,” he says loudly, cutting you off as he slings his bag over one shoulder. He mock-salutes you, two fingers to his brow as he turns to go. “Robin.”
You sink back into your seat and watch him leave, only turning back to Riko when the door swings closed. She opens her mouth and you hold out a hand. “Don’t start.”
—
At some point you start calling, letting yourself fill the silence of your little townhouse with idle chatter as he listens. He’s not one for small talk, you learn, and he’s a good listener. And he pays attention. He remembers the stupid little details you give him, the names of classmates and professors you can’t stand.
“Katie from Ohio?” he asks when you’re ranting one day about the partner you’ve been assigned in enviro. “We don’t like her, correct?” We.
“We do not.” Katie from Ohio does not pull her weight in group projects, and it’s driving you up the wall.
“You tell your prof about it? Isn’t this your favorite one?”
“Yeah, he is,” you groan. Haibara teaches your conservation bio class, and he also taught ecology your freshman year, and he’s the best teacher you’ve ever had. “But no. I don’t want to bother him about it. It’s whatever.”
He hums, unimpressed. “Is it?”
You groan, feeling like you’re getting lectured by your parents. You hate when other people are right. “You want me to talk to him.”
“I’m just saying, if you get a shit grade and it’s Katie’s fault, don’t come crying to me.”
“I will, though,” you say, putting your phone on speaker and setting it on the counter while you pour dog food into Batman’s bowl. “It’ll be super dramatic. I’ll sob in your arms and everything.”
He snorts. “Talk to your prof, Robin.” You stick your tongue out like he can see you.
But you do talk to your prof, and Haibara is your favorite for a reason. Katie gets a shit grade. You do not. Fushiguro does, in fact, say “I told you so.”
By mid-September, you still have no idea what Fushiguro’s first name is. You’re at the end of your rope.
you: GOOD MORNING MASON
fushiguro (cute vet): no.
you: MORT
fushiguro (cute vet): no.
you: why don’t you want me to know. is it crazy
you: melvin
fushiguro (cute vet): NO.
you: marie
you: meghan
fushiguro (cute vet): …
you: well, that’s it
you: i’m calling you maleficent until you tell me
you: i’m gonna do it in public too
you: so loud
INCOMING CALL: FUSHIGURO (CUTE VET)
You don’t greet each other when you pick up—you never have. Instead, Fushiguro just says, “You could’ve picked like, ten other Disney characters and you went with Maleficent?”
“Don’t hate. You’d rather be Mufasa? Boy’s dead.”
“Oh my god.” Everything Fushiguro says sounds long-suffering. You wonder what it sounds like when he laughs, really laughs, if those walls ever break down and he lets himself actually outwardly express his emotions.
“I can call you Mickey Mouse if you really want—” Batman starts barking from his spot at the window, and you groan, waving your hand at him pointlessly as you try to get him to stop. “Hey! No! There is nothing outside, what are you on about?”
“He probably just thinks you’re barking with him,” Fushiguro says unhelpfully.
“Oh, and yours don’t bark out of turn?”
“Not really.”
Now that you think about it, you actually aren’t sure you’ve ever heard Shiro and Kuro bark aside from excited greetings at the dog park. “What the fuck, dude? Do they teach you the secrets of the trade in vet school?”
“Nah, I’m just a natural.” He says it so deadpan you aren’t sure if he’s joking or actually being cocky.
“Come over and help, then,” you say, before you can think it through. It’s a Saturday night, and clearly neither of you have anything better to do.
You aren’t sure what exactly you’re expecting him to say, but for some reason you’re surprised when he just responds, “Okay.”
“Bring the dogs.” You text him your address, and half an hour later he shows up with the dogs in tow. Meeting him at the door, you see his car parked along the curb. It’s small, black, as unreadable and practical as everything else about him.
“That,” he says, pointing to the long-deceased cactus in the pot on your front stoop, “is dead.” Probably because it’s been there since August and you forgot it was there after one week.
“Yes, thank you, very astute.”
“Isn’t keeping plants alive your whole thing? What are they teaching you?”
“Okay.” You start to close the door, but Shiro bounces forward and noses between it excitedly, and you laugh, opening it to let her and Kuro in. “Be nice,” you warn Fushiguro, letting him step inside. He rolls his eyes as he passes, and Batman nearly knocks him over with how excitedly he leaps up to greet him.
He’s also barking, and you raise a brow at Fushiguro expectantly. “Okay, Dog Whisperer. Do your thing.” You close the door behind him, and in the two seconds that you’re turned away, Batman fucking stops barking.
You whirl around, planting your hands on your hips, and find Fushiguro kneeling in front of your very silent, very happy dog.
“What the fuck.”
He looks up at you with the most smug expression on his face, and you throw up your hands in exasperation.
“Hey, don’t pout about it,” he teases, standing and following you into the living room. “That’s what you wanted.”
“I wanted you to teach me how to make him stop, but apparently you just slipped him treats behind my back.”
“Insult to my talents,” he says, hesitating when Kuro leaps onto your couch. “Are they allowed—”
“Ah, yeah, it’s fine.” Batman follows suit. “Got enough dog hair on that couch to make another couch, probably.”
You suddenly find you don’t really know what to say. Because Fushiguro is here, in your house, on a Saturday, your dog is not barking, and you’re alone. Alone with a guy you are very much attracted to. Suddenly you just don’t know any of the words in the English language.
But Fushiguro seems entirely at ease. He always does, really. There’s a quiet sort of confidence about him, and you aren’t sure if it’s fabricated or not. He just looks like he belongs wherever he is, nonchalant about everything.
“Done any more stalking?” he asks, sitting next to Shiro on the floor. You flush a little, feeling weirdly caught out when you aren’t the one bringing it up.
“No, but I might if you don’t tell me more about this band of yours.”
He shakes his head, absently playing with Shiro’s fur. “Just a crazy idea my housemates had. We just practice in the basement. Probably not very good.”
You opt to sit on Shiro’s other side on the ground, and Batman uses the opportunity to lick you directly in the face, since he’s on the couch and you’re now eye-level. “Thank you,” you tell him dryly, shoving his snout away.
“Don’t get humble now,” you tell Fushiguro. “What do you play? Or do you sing?” You really can’t imagine him singing. Everything about this guy screams quiet bass player.
Apparently you’re right. He won’t tell you the name of his band, and allegedly he doesn’t have any gigs this month, so you let it drop—but only for now. “Cagey,” you accuse him, but you’re smiling.
You talk about your courseloads for the semester—his is pretty bio and anatomy-heavy this semester where yours is mostly ecology and conservation-focused, but there’s a bit of overlap in your curriculum, and you find that it’s easy to make conversation about your respective career paths, even though he won’t stop bringing up the fact that you managed to kill a cactus.
“They’re notoriously hard to kill,” he drawls. “Did you try to?”
“No!” You cross your arms over your chest indignantly. “Mean.”
“Honest and mean aren’t the same thing.”
You don’t really notice the sun going down until the living room is swathed in shadow and you have to flip on the floor lamp. It’s been hours by now, but it’s felt like minutes. Every thing you learn about Fushiguro opens up ten new lines of questioning, and you want to know so much more about him. But he shrouds himself in this mystery you can’t seem to get around.
Eventually you stand up to grab snacks from the kitchen, and when you return you find Batman practically on top of Fushiguro, licking his face while Fushiguro just takes it. Cute, you think uselessly.
Batman. But also Fushiguro. And also just the sight of Fushiguro playing with your dog and looking entirely at home on your shaggy living room floor. Fuck, he’s really cute.
“Have you always had dogs?”
He shakes his head as he sits up and nudges Batman off of him, gaze going just a little distant. “Not ‘til I was a teenager.” There’s more there.
“Your idea? Tsumiki’s?”
He shrugs it off, picking at loose threads on his sleeve that don’t exist, some nervous tic he’s developed that seems to only show up when you try to talk about him. Hence, shroud of mystery.
Like you gathered at the coffee shop, his parents aren’t in the picture—dead or absent, though, you’re not sure. He does tell you a little bit about his legal guardian. His name’s Gojo, and according to Fushiguro he is certifiably insane. He says this enough that you know he means it fondly—if he didn’t, he just wouldn’t bring Gojo up at all.
It shouldn’t be possible to talk so much and learn so little, but the hours keep slipping by and finally neither of you can hide the yawns punctuating your conversation. “I should go,” he says, and you reluctantly lead him to the door, crouching to say bye to Shiro and Kuro before you open the door.
“Drive safe, Fushiguro.”
You don’t expect him to respond, but he pauses halfway down your drive, turning to look at you over his shoulder. The moon is out now, and it casts him and his dark clothes in silver. You suddenly find you can’t look away.
Not that you really want to.
“Megumi,” he says.
“What?”
“My name.” He swallows, looking away quickly before looking back. “You can call me Megumi. If you want.”
Chill. Be chill, you tell yourself, trying to school your features into that same neutral expression Fushiguro—Megumi—always has, but you know it’s not working. You can’t help but smile. You feel, weirdly, like you’ve earned something.
“Okay,” you say, leaning on the doorjamb. “Megumi.”
Megumi.
You do one last little bit of internet stalking that night, because you just want to know.
His name means blessing.
—
Everything about Megumi’s house speaks to the collision of three wildly different college-aged boys tempered by the saving grace of one girl.
Remotes for a range of gaming consoles are sprawled across the floor, there are way too many half-empty bags of Doritos, and you’re pretty sure there’s just a single half of a drumstick stuck between two of the couch cushions. But there are also nice, dark tapestries pinned to the walls, string lights bordering the room, a couple plants that are better-kept than any of yours have been.
You know very little about Megumi’s three housemates except that one is a golden retriever in human form, one is a skater boy, and one is a senior named Kirara who somehow keeps them all in check.
“Sorry for the mess,” he says, gesturing at the controllers and chip bags that honestly don’t constitute a mess in your book. Not after all the boys’ dorms you’ve seen, including Hajime’s.
“I like it,” you say honestly. “Also, it smells good in here. I’m proud. Kirara?”
“Kirara.” He nods and leads you to the couch, where you confirm that yes, that’s a broken drumstick.
“I don’t even—Jesus,” Megumi says, pulling it out of the gap between the cushions and tossing it onto the low coffee table. “He breaks more of these than I think is normal.”
“He being skater boy or golden retriever?” you ask as you tug your legs onto the couch to sit cross-legged, facing him. You dragged Batman with you—Megumi said his dogs would appreciate the company—and he’s taken it upon himself to sniff every corner of the house before deeming it suitable for playtime.
“Golden retriever. His name’s Yuji. Skater boy is Ino.” None of his housemates are here—it’s a random Thursday afternoon and the two of you happened to not have classes after two thirty.
“How’d you meet them?”
“Kirara went to my high school, so I knew her before coming here. I knew Ino too, actually. Yuji—I don’t know that anyone really meets him so much as gets forcibly adopted by him?” He somehow manages to make his scoff sound affectionate. “Him and our friend Kugisaki. They’re crazy, but we were all in the same orientation group freshman year.”
“Your friends sound fun.” You like the idea of two outgoing freshmen just deciding Megumi had to be their friend. “How’d you know Ino?”
He tugs at the sleeve of his black henley, picking at a nonexistent string. There’s a bit of a pause before he says, “His—I don’t know, his mentor? Nanami, he knows Gojo. So he was around sometimes.”
You don’t really know what to ask, simply because there’s so much to ask. It doesn’t take a detective to know there’s a lot to unpack in Megumi’s past. “How long have you been…” What’s the proper term for this? “Has Gojo been around, like… since you were a kid, or...?”
Despite your attempt to catch his gaze, Megumi’s eyes are trained on the far wall. “Kind of. Yeah.”
When he doesn’t elaborate, you fight to keep your lips sealed, to not push. You don’t have a right to his past. He can tell you if he wants to. But you’ve always been impatient.
And it’s starting to become a pattern, this strange caginess about his own life. His family, his friends. Every so often he lets something slip, and then it’s like you can see the doors in his mind slam shut—six deadbolts holding you out.
You know a little bit about Gojo, but that’s where the information stops. You drop hints that you want to meet Tsumiki, and whether he’s protective or just too oblivious to pick up on them, you can’t tell.
Maybe, then, the issue is that you haven’t given him much either. He’s met your dog and Riko, but maybe you need to offer him more of yourself before he’s comfortable reciprocating.
So you do. You tell him about your family, sitting on his couch with Shiro at his feet and Batman between you, Kuro unable to sit still. He listens while you talk, unsettlingly attentive eyes intent on you. You live about a half-hour drive away from your parents' place, you tell him, though you don’t go home often.
“It’s not that I don’t like my family,” you sigh, leaning back into the couch cushions and stroking Batman’s fur. “It’s more just that they’re never there, always on business, wrapped up in their own shit. So there’s just… no reason for me to stick around, except a couple times a year on holidays.” You shrug. “At least here it’s not an empty house. Or it’s not usually. When my roommate’s not in fucking Japan.”
“At least Japan’s cool,” he says, shrugging.
You sit up, leaning toward him. “You’ve been?”
He shrugs. “Yeah, once. Gojo said Tsumiki and I weren’t allowed to hit sixteen without having been on a stupid-long flight somewhere. Which sounds insane, but that’s pretty standard Gojo logic for you, I guess.”
“That’s so cool,” you sigh, part of you wishing you could be on a stupid-long flight right now. On the way to somewhere warm, preferably. Fall is starting to give way to an early winter, and you’re not looking forward to running Batman in the cold.
Travel, at least, seems to be a safe topic, and the two of you trade stories about road trips and flights and different cities. You challenge Megumi to Mario Kart at some point and immediately regret it, because why is he so good?
After he thoroughly kicks your ass, you sink back into conversation, walk the dogs, and eventually part ways so you can get some work done.
megumi (cute vet): you know when somebody says they’ll text you when they get home
megumi (cute vet): and they don’t?
you: SHIT SORRY
megumi (cute vet): you’re not dead.
you: NOPE
you: sorry i got back and then batman knocked over a lamp
megumi (cute vet): you don’t have to cover for his vigilantism, sidekick. i already know.
You do feel bad for forgetting to text him, but part of you is a little warmed by the fact that he was worried. Not that he’d ever admit to being worried about anyone, except maybe a dog.
you: okay fine he was stopping a robbery
you: happy?
megumi (cute vet): depends on what they were trying to steal
The work on your desk says you should stop texting and buckle down on your assignments, but he starts teasing, and you start feeding into it, and then you’re on the phone again, and by the time you finally hang up it’s too late to reasonably get anything done.
You can’t say you’re particularly upset about it.
—
The semester ramps up quickly, and you’re drowning in work. That’s your excuse when your basil plant by the kitchen sink dies a week after you bring it home—you’re just busy.
Megumi notices, and the next time he’s over a rosemary plant mysteriously appears in its place. He denies any involvement.
When you aren’t with Riko or Hajime, on the phone with Suko, or hanging out with friends from class, you’re with Megumi. His place, your place, the dog park, the coffee shop. It hasn’t reached a point where your friends comment on how much time you spend together (except Riko, who has a loud opinion on everything and does not care if other people don’t want to hear it), but you like the hours you steal during the week just walking around or drinking coffee or trading idle conversation.
You even visit him at work one Sunday when the clinic is slow, watching him handle the few dogs and single cat that come through. He’s easygoing with the clients and has that same calming effect on every animal—like he speaks some secret language, understands them in a way other people don’t. You love watching him like this.
You like this guy. It’s not rocket science—you put him in your contacts as “cute vet” the day you met him. The hard part is that Megumi is too difficult to read. If he has feelings for you, you have no idea. You don’t think he’d go out of his way to spend time with someone he didn’t genuinely like, but whether it’s platonic or not is so fucking over your head.
Until you finally meet one of his friends.
It’s Riko’s doing, really. The two of you are at the coffee shop when she strikes up a conversation with a redhead in line, and it doesn’t take long for her to make the connection, probably because they’re both talking ten miles a minute and not holding anything back.
“Oh my god!” Riko screeches, turning to you after you place your order. “Hey! This is Nobara. She’s friends with Fushiguro.”
She beams at you. “How do you guys know Fushiguro?”
Riko answers for you. “The vet. She has a dog, the clinic was closed, he was there. It was probably super romantic.” You groan.
Nobara’s mouth forms a small O and then she says, “Ah, you must be the sidekick.”
You can’t stifle your laugh. “He even calls me that when he’s talking to other people?”
She laughs, shaking her head. “No, he doesn’t tell anyone anything. Ever. But that’s what you’re in his phone as, and I saw his screen before he could hide it.” She leans in conspiratorially. “He won’t tell us who you are, which means he’s into you, y’know that, right?”
“Um. Is he? I don’t really—”
“Girl,” Nobara says flatly. “He doesn’t talk to people. Yuji and I have to force that guy out of the house half the time. If he’s hanging out with you, it’s because he likes you. Not that he knows that, probably. He’s horrible at feelings. I offered to give him a free therapy session and he said he’d rather become a monk.”
Riko mutters something about how that wouldn’t be too far off from whatever aesthetic he has going on right now, but you’re hung up on something else—Yuji and I.
“Oh my god,” you say, realizing something. “You’re Kugisaki.”
Her entire face lights up and she bounces on the balls of her feet. “He told you about me?” she squeals. “Ooh, he does love me! I’m gonna give him so much shit! What did he say? Was it good?”
The three of you end up talking for half an hour, after you all get your coffee and find an empty table. Nobara talks a mile a minute, but you can’t help hanging on to every word she says—she has a lot to say about Fushiguro, and you feel like you might be learning more about him this way than from the numerous conversations you’ve had with him.
She lives down the street from his place. She knows Gojo, who is apparently exactly the way Megumi described him—loud and eccentric and kind of stupid, but a guy who obviously loves his kids. She and Yuji, true to Megumi’s recollection, basically forced their friendship upon him on the first day of school, and they’ve been a trio ever since.
“He doesn’t tell anyone shit,” Nobara says, echoing her own words from earlier. “I feel like I probably know more about him from Gojo than anything. Or reading his notifications over his shoulder.” She smirks. “But he’s a good guy. I wouldn’t put up with his shit if I didn’t mean that.”
“About—what you said earlier, about him… maybe having feelings for me,” you start.
“Definitely having feelings for you,” she corrects. “Whether he knows or not? Undetermined.”
“Right. Uh.” You don’t get the idea that Nobara is a person you ever want to argue with. “Could you not… mention anything about that? To him?”
She sighs. “Course I won’t. Y’know, the guys always say I can’t keep my nose out of things, but two of my roommates have been in love for years and haven’t done anything and I haven’t said a word. Even though it sucks out part of my soul every time they’re in a room together and they just stare longingly when the other one isn’t looking. They’re so stupid.”
“You and Fushiguro are also stupid,” Riko says helpfully. You glare at her, and she throws her hands up in exasperation. “What? You like him, right? You can’t look me in the eyes and say you don’t like him.”
“He is a good friend,” you say, feeling the burn in your cheeks give you away even before Riko starts cackling.
“I like you,” Nobara tells her, sizing her up. “I might regret saying this, but I think I need you to meet one of my housemates. You could be chaos goblins together. I feel it in my bones.”
Riko rubs her hands together like she’s plotting something, and you think you should probably keep her as far away from said housemate as possible.
Eventually, Nobara pushes to her feet, draining the rest of her coffee and slinging her bag over her shoulder. “I gotta go, but I’m so glad I ran into you. I feel like a spy, knowing Fushiguro’s secret girlfriend.” She wiggles her brows at you, and you don’t bother denying it, just burying your head in your hands instead. “You guys should give me your numbers. I can give you Fushiguro intel.”
Riko immediately accepts Nobara’s phone. You wonder how Fushiguro will feel about all this—fond exasperation seems like the default emotion when it comes to his friends. But you give her your number, waving goodbye as she skips out the door, and lean back, thinking as Riko immediately starts to tease you about your boyfriend-not-boyfriend and how at least he has cool friends, even if he doesn’t have a personality.
You just keep looking out the window, trading snarky comments with Riko as it gets dark—earlier now, at the end of September.
“Are you ever gonna tell him?” Riko presses. “I don’t wanna watch you pine for the next six months.”
“We haven’t even known each other that long,” you insist, tracing patterns aimlessly on the tabletop. “And I don’t… I don’t know. I kind of want him to be the one to say something. Because if Nobara’s wrong and he isn’t actually into me, I could fuck everything up—”
“Isn’t actually into you?” Riko exclaims. “Oh. My god.” She waves a hand in front of your eyes. “Can you see? Do you need to get your vision checked? Do you—”
“Okay!” you laugh, swatting her hands away. “Message received, Jesus. Chaos goblin was right.”
“I wear that as a badge of honor,” Riko says solemnly.
Yeah. She can never meet Nobara’s housemate.
—
It’s a Wednesday, and you and Megumi are walking back to your place from the dog park. His car’s at your house, and the dogs have just had a very high-energy playdate that’ll hopefully knock them out for the night. The air is chilly and the sky dimming, and everything about it feels immaculately fall.
That’s where your conversation has ended up—the upcoming fall break, which is really just a Friday where neither of your campuses have classes. A three-day weekend really shouldn’t be called a break, you think. It’s misleading.
“You’re not going home?” he asks, and you sigh, shaking your head.
“Parents won’t be home. Not really much of a point.”
“We could—” He clears his throat. “We can hang out that weekend if you want. If you need the company.”
“You’re not going home either?” You glance over at him, a little puzzled. “Like—to Gojo’s?” His lips become a thin, tight line, and you wonder if you’ve somehow crossed some invisible boundary. You’re about to tell him he doesn’t have to talk about it if he doesn’t want to, despite being on the brink of insanity because he doesn’t tell you anything, ever.
But then he says, “He’s a bartender. Not around weekends, usually.”
“Ah.” Nobara mentioned that.
You did tell Megumi about running into Nobara in the coffee shop, and he immediately looked like you told him that you hung out with Gojo and saw all his baby pictures.
“She’s nice!” you insisted, and he sighed, raking a hand through his hair.
“She has no filter.”
“She’s fun.”
“She’s Kugisaki.” He shrugged. “Learn anything interesting?”
You told him about your conversation, minus the whole feelings thing, and he agreed that Riko and Toge Inumaki should never, ever meet. “For the good of the entire world,” he said solemnly. “People would die, Robin.”
Now, as the two of you turn onto your street, he glances at you like he’s trying to find something. And maybe it’s how tired you are, maybe it’s the way his eyes look so bright even though they’re so dark, maybe it’s that weird streetlight-night aura that makes everything feel a little bit not real, but you find yourself studying him right back, meeting his gaze without shame.
You want to know him, to be a part of his life in the way he’s become a fixture in yours. You want to meet his housemates. You want to meet his sister, his family. You want him to open the door and stop acting like you’re going to rob him or something the second you get inside. He knows you better than that, right?
He blinks, and you smirk. “I win.”
“Wh—that was not a staring contest.”
“It’s okay,” you tell him sympathetically. “You can’t be good at everything.”
His laugh—his real laugh—isn’t anything like you thought it’d be, but somehow it’s even better. It transforms his whole face, some blink-of-an-eye shift that lights up his eyes and makes everything about him brighter, louder.
You want to make him laugh like that again. As often as you can, really. Always.
“What?” he asks, staring at you, the light lingering in his eyes, some sort of afterimage of his joy.
“I just—I like your laugh.”
He stops, and you realize you’ve reached the end of your driveway. You drop Batman’s leash and let him run around the yard, and Megumi’s dogs follow suit, knowing better than to go far.
“I like your laugh, too,” he says, a crooked smile spreading across his face. And somehow that feels more like a confession than anything he’s ever said to you.
You’re very close.
He’s leaning in and you’re almost subconsciously reaching up to meet him, heels leaving the ground, and he’s still got the slightest curve of a smile lingering on his lips, and—
“Oh!” Shiro jumps on you from the side, tail wagging excitedly.
When you look back up at Megumi, laughter on your lips, his smile is gone, and he’s looking away, hands shoved in his pockets.
“Megumi—”
“That’s my cue,” he says, a forced-sounding chuckle punctuating the sentence. “I should, um. Get back.”
“Oh. Um, right. Yeah. Totally.” You’re kicking yourself now, feeling stupid, foolish. Did you just mess this whole thing up? Was it too soon? Did you read it wrong?
Megumi opens the back door of the car and lets the dogs hop in before circling around to the driver’s seat. “Robin…”
You look at him, trying to squash the hope adamant in your chest. And he looks like he doesn’t know what to say, for a moment, his lips parting and then closing and his eyes darting around before they finally land on you again. “Night,” he says quietly.
“Night, Megumi.” You lift a hand in a half-wave. “See you.”
Batman stares at the street long after the car has disappeared around the corner, and so do you.
“Fuck,” you murmur, and then again, louder, “fuck.”
—
Megumi’s texts over the next week are less frequent and more distant—at least, you think so. Maybe you’re getting too in your own head about it.
From then on, he’s pretty quiet. You wonder if you fucked up. You haven’t talked about it, the kiss. Almost-kiss. Your texts start getting fewer and far between, and in the chaos leading up to midterms you almost don’t notice. Almost.
Lots of almosts, lately.
you: still on for break?
Part of you expects him to go back on his word, say something came up. Especially when he takes a half hour to respond. He’s just busy, you tell yourself. Stop being dramatic.
megumi (cute vet): your place at 5, right?
“Oh,” you say aloud to nobody but Batman, smiling a little. Well, that’s good. You can ask him what’s been on his mind lately. He just seems… preoccupied.
When break rolls around, you spend Friday out with friends and Saturday catching up on schoolwork until Megumi comes over. You’ve hung out so often—you don’t know why you’re nervous.
And it seems contagious. He still shows up at your door and immediately picks up a conversation you left off on the last time you texted him, but he just seems slightly out of reach, somehow. You let it slide for about twenty minutes before you sit him down on the couch and ask.
“Okay. What’s going on with you?”
“What?” You don’t know if he’s playing dumb or just actually doesn’t realize he’s been acting strange.
“You’ve been… look. You’re acting weird. And I feel like we need to talk about whatever happened last week.”
The ensuing silence makes you want to take it back, or say something else, or do anything to create sound in the little bubble of waiting that's formed around the both of you. But you make yourself wait. Give him the space to find words.
“I guess… there is something I wanted to talk to you about,” he says suddenly, flatly, without looking at you. Your mouth slams shut and you find yourself drawing back a little, the remoteness of his voice almost physically distancing.
“Uh,” you say, like the eloquent person you are. “Okay?”
He swallows once, hard, and he looks at you with so much reluctance you almost wish he’d just look away. Your heart is twisting itself into knots.
“I think we should… take a step back.”
“What?” you whisper. “What do you mean?”
He sighs, raking a hand through his hair. “I mean—this is going… do you want a relationship?”
The question feels so abrupt you’re momentarily shocked into silence. But you know where he’s going.
He doesn’t want this. Doesn’t want—you. And it hurts more than you thought it would. It’s not so much a sharp stabbing sensation as a thousand needles worming their way into the crevices of your heart, slow and numerous and deadly.
Because you do want this. You want him.
“Yes,” you admit, quiet.
And he says, “I don’t.”
In general, you want to ask, or with me? But the words stall in your mouth, all blocked up and sticky, and you don’t say anything at all.
“You shouldn’t,” he murmurs, looking down. “Want that. With me, I mean. It’s…”
“It’s what?” you ask, hesitant. Another long, horrible silence.
“It’s never going to work,” he says, detached. Almost cold. “Us. This.” He’s still not looking at you.
“Let me ask you something, then,” you say, hating the unsteadiness of your voice. “Do you want it to?” Do you have feelings for me? You want to know if this is something he’s denying himself or if he really just doesn’t like you.
You know your own intelligence, though. You haven’t made up whatever this feeling is between you.
He doesn’t answer your question. Just murmurs, “You don’t know me.” And somehow it sounds like an accusation.
“You won’t let me!” you burst out, your voice louder than you intended. But all this caginess, this dancing around everything real, it’s got you at the end of your fuse. Shiro looks up and whines, Kuro leaping off the couch to stand in front of the both of you, curious. “I told you everything! I told you about my family and my friends and my classes and my hometown and my car problems and fucking Katie from Ohio, and you don’t say anything, Megumi, you won’t talk about your family, you won’t introduce me to your roommates. You won’t tell me about your band or your childhood, you took weeks just to give me your first name! What—are you just embarrassed of me? Do you think I’ll judge you? Do you not trust me? Is that it?”
“No,” he practically growls. “God, it’s just—you don’t understand—”
“You’re right, I don’t!” you exclaim, throwing your hands up. Batman paws at your leg, wondering why you’re shouting. “So help me understand. I know I’m not patient, but if you have shit you’re not ready to talk about, that’s fine. But just say that. Tell me to wait and I’ll wait. Just—give me something.”
He looks at you and he’s utterly unreadable, doors slammed shut.
“If you don’t want me in your life, just fucking say so,” you spit, but your voice is wavering now, uncomposed and only loud so it doesn’t shatter. If he really said it, said I don’t want you, you don’t know what you would do. It would be too sharp, too painful, too much.
“You don’t want this,” he says instead, averting his gaze. His tone is measured and even and emotionless.
“Don’t tell me what I want,” you seethe, but your words come out quiet. “If you really think I don’t want this, it’s because you won’t let me.” You’re whispering now, worried that if your voice raises any more, it’ll crack the paper-thin walls holding back your tears. “Megumi…”
“S’better this way.” He rubs the heel of his hand over his eyes, a messy movement that seems so at odds with the evenness of his tone. “I… I have to go, Robin.”
And the strange, unstable feelings of betrayal and confusion and hurt morph abruptly back into something hotter, something angrier. Because how dare he come here, spend fall break at your house, listen to you spill your heart onto the carpeted floor? How dare he run away, say he doesn’t want this, and then still call you that stupid, endearing fucking nickname?
“Yeah,” you say icily, glancing away with your arms crossed over your chest. “You do.”
You count to five, silently, before he moves, and you don’t look when he does. You blink tears out of your eyes when Kuro hesitates, nosing at your hip before following Megumi out the door.
It slams, hard, and Batman stays perched at the entry, tracking him as he walks out of your house, your life.
You don’t move for a very long time.
INTERMISSION // A REAL GOOD START
MEGUMI FUSHIGURO IS in deep, deep shit.
That is to say, he’s lost control of the situation, which is the one thing he does not allow to happen. Ever.
He can’t stop thinking about you.
Sleep is hard to come by in the days after he fucks everything up. He keeps thinking about how it could have gone if he’d just—if he’d done anything else. If he hadn’t run off after he almost kissed you, traitorous heart thumping in his chest even while his brain screamed danger!
You became part of his life so fast and so naturally he didn’t know it was too late until the damage had already been done. If he let himself kiss you, he would drown.
But he didn’t. He shut you down instead, on a Saturday night that could have been different.
He makes excuses when Gojo invites him over Sunday afternoon, going into work early just to avoid him. Even if Megumi’s perfected his poker face, nothing gets past Gojo. It’s like he has some sixth sense for when his pseudo-kids are in emotional turmoil. He’ll force Megumi into a talk therapy session (run by the most unqualified bartender of all time) and he’ll die of embarrassment on the couch.
So instead of talking to someone, anyone, he throws himself into his work, into rehearsals, into school. He goes to the clinic early and leaves late. His fingers are sore from plucking the same lines out on his bass until his housemates go to sleep. His eyes are dry from staring at his laptop until three in the morning. But it doesn’t matter what he does. He can’t. Stop. Thinking. About. You.
The thing about being in a band with all of his housemates is that there’s really no world in which they don’t notice something’s off. They’re spending even more time together lately than usual with the Battle of the Bands going on, and his only relief is that none of them say anything—at least not aloud. There are a number of raised brows and the occasional questioning shoulder nudge, but it seems Yuji, Ino, and Kirara know him well enough by now not to push. That, at least, he’s grateful for.
Nobara Kugisaki is a different story.
It’s a Monday when she storms into his living room—she didn’t even bother knocking on the front door. Shiro and Kuro run happily around her legs, and normally she’d be fawning over them, but today she looks furious. He can almost see smoke coming right out of her ears, eyes narrowed to dark slits as she stares him down.
“Fushiguro.”
“You,” he points out, “do not live here.”
“And you,” she seethes, “have one minute to explain to me what the fuck you did.” Before he can say anything, she waves her phone around in the air and says, “Hi, Nobara, I was just wondering if Fushiguro seems okay to you? Things kind of fell off and I would feel weird reaching out but I’m just a little worried.”
She’s quoting you.
Texts from you.
Shit.
Megumi knows that you and Kugisaki have met, but for some reason it just did not cross his mind that you might have exchanged contact information.
Control the situation.
He clears his throat, refusing to break eye contact. “Well, she said it,” he huffs, his usual toneless expression. “Things fell off.”
You still wanted to check on him. He treated you like that and you still…
“You broke up with her.”
“We weren’t together—”
“You broke up with her. Are you a fucking moron? This girl—” She jabs her finger into her phone screen so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t hurt— “is so fucking cool. And she puts up with you. And you like her. And now you’re acting all weird. So what, you go over there and tell her you can’t be together? What the fuck, dude? Why?”
What a loaded question that is.
“Because,” he grits out. “It wouldn’t have worked.”
“It wouldn’t have worked,” Kugisaki repeats flatly, walking over to the couch and making herself at home way too close to him, staring him down. He turns his head away. God, she is so persistent. She is so annoying.
“Yeah, congrats, your hearing works. Can you leave me alone?”
“Tell me you don’t have feelings for her and I will.”
“I—”
“Look at me and say it,” she snaps.
Megumi looks at her. “I don’t,” he mutters.
Kugisaki rolls her eyes so hard Megumi can’t believe they stay in her skull. “Okay, sure,” she says skeptically. He doesn’t like this tone, where it’s going. “So if I set her up with Toge, you wouldn’t mind?”
“I—” He clamps his mouth shut, hands curled into fists. “Kugisaki, that’s not—”
“That’s what I thought.” Normally she’d look smug, victorious after pulling one over on him, but this is worse. She just looks… concerned. He hates it.
“Look,” she sighs. “You’re not going to talk to me, so I’m not going to waste my time. But when you figure this out—and you will figure it out, or I might kill somebody, and it will be you—I’ll be all ears.” Her gaze might as well be pinning him to the wall with how fierce it is. Sometimes he lets himself forget how much of a force Kugisaki can be, and right now, she’s got that glint in her eyes that he hates, the one that makes him feel like she knows something he doesn’t. “Understood?”
“If I say understood, will you get out of my house?” he grumbles. She says nothing, just looking at him, and he thinks maybe she could win a staring contest with a fish. For a long, tense minute, he doesn’t say anything, and neither does she.
Whatever. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’ll forget about it eventually.
He sighs, tipping his head back against the wall.
“Understood.”
—
Things seem to happen around Megumi, to him, not because of him. The last conscious decision he made was to end things with you, and now he’s just a passive witness to his own life. Ino has something going on with Nobara’s housemate, Yuji’s scrambling to pass his midterms, Kirara bounces between their house and Hakari’s place faster than he can keep track of, and Megumi… he just exists in the periphery, goes through the motions.
He keeps finding his thumb hovering over your contact name. A dog with a silly name comes into the clinic and he wants to text you about it. He hears a song that reminds him of you (every song reminds him of you) and he wants to play it for you.
He wonders if Riko has him on a hit list yet.
A voice in the back of his head that sounds an awful lot like Kugisaki keeps repeating, Why?
Why did he end things? Why did he bite the bullet so fucking hard?
Because you deserve better than him, honestly.
You don’t know me, he told you. What he didn’t say, though—because you wouldn’t want me if you did.
Part of him knows that’s probably unfair to you—your words keep playing back in his mind and not even his music can drown them out. You won’t let me! But there are things he can’t imagine saying out loud. Explaining the way his dad disappeared, not even showing his face again when his mom died—eighteen-year-old Gojo from across the street on their doorstep, promising he and Tsumiki wouldn’t go into foster care. Bloody knuckles from fighting middle school bullies. Gojo and Geto trying to raise a bunch of kids when they were still kids themselves.
Gojo didn’t leave, but he should have. Megumi knows he threw away so much of his life for him, for Tsumiki. He could have done so much more. He could have done anything he wanted. But Megumi held him back.
Maybe he’s holding him back even now. He knows Gojo would deny it.
The point is, Megumi has shit to figure out for himself, and you shouldn’t have to sit by and watch him deal with it. That’s not fair to you. Yeah, he went about it wrong, but—but this is for the best. You can find someone who actually gives you everything you deserve, and he can… whatever.
Megumi’s band, Shibuya Incident, doesn’t perform this Friday at The Fix—Shoko and Geto’s bar. They’ve already made finals. Tonight will just decide who their opponents are. But even if he’s not up there playing, the Battle of the Bands is a welcome distraction. Even if Ino’s just making lovesick puppy eyes at the stage the whole time and Yuji won’t shut up about wanting Taco Bell. Megumi lets himself get a little lost in the music, and Kugisaki’s band is good, really. He votes for them as soon as the digital form opens and then vows to never tell her.
They should win, but Black Flash takes it again. Kasumi Miwa and Maki’s sister and their friends. They won the whole thing last year. Great, Megumi thinks.
The night comes and goes, and he dodges Gojo on his way out of the bar despite knowing he’ll get a text about it later. And then they’re all piled into Yuji’s car on the way to get his beloved Taco Bell, and he’s just about convinced he’s done with feeling anything at all when Kirara screams.
For a second, there’s nothing at all.
And then the world comes back to life around him in a shock of colors and sounds and a lot of cuss words, mostly coming out of his own mouth.
“Holy shit!” Yuji shouts, yanking the wheel hard to the right, and Megumi can barely process the sight of the white car barreling toward them before there’s crunching metal and shattering glass, and it’s like he feels the collision as an aftershock, shaking all his bones back into place. The airbags go off and he’s blind, wind knocked clean from his lungs, and then he’s moving—no, he moves. No more passivity. This is real.
“Everybody out,” he demands, wrenching the passenger door open and taking in the sight of the crash. Smoke is billowing from the hood of Yuji’s car, the vacant passenger side of the other one entirely smashed in. “Everyone okay?”
Yuji circles around the back of the car and Megumi clocks immediately that he’s holding his wrist weird, wrong. “Yuji—”
“Ino, come on—hey. Hey. Ino.”
Kirara’s got one knee on the edge of the backseat and one hand braced on the roof of the car, and Ino is not making any move to get out.
Sirens. Who called the cops?
“Kirara?” Yuji asks, moving to help her, but she holds up a hand and looks back over her shoulder.
“Don’t. I got it. We’re fine. Just—bad memories, I think.”
Megumi knows Ino hates driving. He doesn’t know why, but he can guess. So he doesn’t push it. Kirara’s the psych major, after all. And probably the one with the most emotional intelligence and any semblance of tact. She’s got him.
He’s about to turn to Yuji when somebody stumbles out of the other car. The car that had been driving in the wrong lane,directly toward them. If Yuji hadn’t reacted so quickly, they’d all be dead.
“What the fuck,” he hisses.
It’s his cousin.
“What,” he says, louder, “the fuck? Naoya!” He storms over and grabs Naoya by the front of his shirt—his breath reeks of alcohol, and he’s laughing, like he didn’t just almost commit vehicular manslaughter. “What the hell, man? What’s wrong with you? Are you—”
He hears… screaming?
But not from here. Not in person. It’s…
Megumi looks at the cracked phone on the ground, having been flung straight through Naoya's shattered windshield. He looks at his shitbag cousin, who’s half tipping-over, legs like jelly under him.
“Naoya,” he growls. “Who. Is. That?”
“Hah,” he slurs. “Mm. My ex! My ex. She is… she is.”
He’s not making sense, but Megumi might get back into Yuji’s car and drive it into his cousin on purpose. Naoya was dating this girl—Megumi knows her. She's friends with Yuji. Some brand of art major, he’s pretty sure, and she's nice, way too good for him. And then what, she finally gets away and he still torments her? By drunk calling her from the car, letting her listen as he crashes? The blood in Megumi’s veins might as well be venom.
He shoves Naoya back with a scoff, letting him stumble over himself, and grabs the broken phone off the ground. “Hey,” he says, and she’s still screaming, this poor fucking girl— “Hey! Hey. Calm down. It’s—hello?”
“Naoya? What the fuck, Naoya—”
She’s definitely talking through tears, maybe angry, maybe scared.
“Not Naoya,” Megumi sighs. “Uh, this is Fushiguro.” She’s quieting a little on the other end, and he hears a guy’s voice trying to talk her down. “Listen. Naoya’s fine. Just… drunk. And an asshole. Are you okay?”
After that, the entire night is a blur.
He talks down Naoya’s traumatized ex-girlfriend on the phone, Ino’s girlfriend shows up and calms him down, and then Gojo and Nanami and Shoko are there and Hakari shows up and Gojo’s dragging Megumi to the ER with Yuji to get his wrist checked out and it’s sprained and Tsumiki is running into the waiting room and hugging the life out of him and Maki calls and Naoya’s got a DUI and then finally, finally they’re home. Megumi can barely keep his eyes open. He doesn't know what time it is.
He sleeps harder than he has in months.
—
Megumi is so fucking exhausted that when his phone starts buzzing the next morning at the kitchen table, he doesn’t actually think it’s real for a second.
INCOMING CALL: SIDEKICK
He’s hallucinating. Sleep deprivation, or something. Or maybe he actually got a concussion in that car crash and now he’s seeing things that aren’t real. That’s the only explanation.
That or you butt-dialed.
He doesn’t bother explaining himself to the others as he stands up and retreats to the hallway, almost letting the phone ring out before steeling himself and swiping to accept the call.
“Hey?”
He’s never greeted you like that before. It sounds so fake. He usually picks up the phone and just starts talking about whatever you texted him, or whatever weird thing he saw that he has to tell you about. Not hey. Hey is for people he doesn’t know. Doesn’t care about.
“Um. Hey.” It is stupid, what just the sound of your voice over the phone does to him. “I just saw this article about a car crash? Are you—”
“I’m fine,” he says, too fast, too sharp. Stop it. “Sorry. I’m—yeah. We’re all fine.”
You clear your throat on the other end of the phone. “Okay. That’s—that’s good. I just… wanted to make sure.”
He pushed you out, and you texted Kugisaki to ask if he was alright.
He pushed you out, and you’re calling to make sure he’s okay.
I’m not, he wants to say. I fucked up. I fucked this up.
I miss you.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. “I… appreciate that.”
Maybe he can still salvage this. Still be friends with you, at least. But that’s a slippery slope, isn’t it? He’ll just hurt you again. But…
“It was my cousin,” he offers, not really knowing why he’s saying it. Maybe as a peace offering. He didn’t tell you things before, important things. Maybe he can start now. “Drunk. On the phone with his ex.”
“Oh,” you say. You sound surprised, but Megumi isn’t sure if you’re more shocked about his words or the fact that he gave them to you. “That’s… awful.”
“Yeah,” Megumi breathes. “Um. Yeah, he’s taken care of now.”
“Good. That’s good.” A dog starts barking, and Megumi feels his lips twitch up into an almost-smile.
“There he goes,” he murmurs. You laugh, and he’s actually smiling, now.
“There he goes,” you say fondly. “I should… go calm him down. I’ll…”
“Yeah, yeah, go,” he says, not sure how to end this. “Um, good… luck.” Stupid. That was so fucking stupid.
“Thanks. Bye, Fushiguro.”
“Bye, Robin,” he says, but the line’s already gone dead.
—
Megumi sees you three times in the month of November, and every time he feels ten times closer to a train wreck.
It snows in November, because it’s stupid and cold and winter comes early here, and there are prints leading toward the dog park. Imprints of dog paws and boots, side by side, and he’s a vet student. He knows what size dog those prints mean. He knows exactly who it is.
He lets Shiro and Kuro tug him all the way to the dog park, and he doesn’t even remember letting himself through the gate. He just knows that you see him right after Kuro starts panting excitedly, and you freeze.
He half-waves in the most pathetic, lame response ever known to mankind.
“Robin,” he says, the nickname falling off his tongue like nothing ever changed.
“Fushiguro.” You smile, hesitant, and he wishes it didn’t feel like a needle that you used his last name. He walks over to you—just following the dogs, he tells himself, that’s natural. Batman almost knocks him over in his excitement.
Megumi can’t not smile at a dog. That would just make him a bad vet, wouldn’t it?
“Hey, bud,” he says, crouching down to pet him. “Yeah, I missed you too.” When he looks back up, your gaze is a little distant, and he closes his eyes for a second, collecting himself. He pushes back to his feet and turns to you.
“Did you know I’d be…” You don’t finish the sentence, but he knows what you mean.
“I… snowprints,” he says, shrugging. It seems to be enough of an answer for you.
“Snowprints,” you echo. “We found you with tracks too, the first time. Didn’t we, Batman?” Like he understands, Batman slaps his tail against the ground and flicks his ears forward and back. Yep. Sure did.
He scrambles for something to say in the silence—small talk is the bane of his existence, but is it ever small talk when it’s you?
Small talk doesn’t matter.
Everything you say matters.
“So. They teach you how to keep plants alive yet?” he asks, and has to fight not to physically cringe after he says it. God, it’s like he never learned how to talk. But you laugh, which he counts as a win.
“No, but someone is significantly less barky, so thank you for that.”
He has you for five minutes before your phone rings, and you chuckle, showing him the screen.
“Ah,” he says. Riko. He doesn’t object when you go, slipping out through the gate with your phone pressed to your ear, because he doesn’t have the right.
But you text first, later.
sidekick: it was good to see you
sidekick: and the dogs. obviously
“Look at that,” he mutters to Kuro, whose nose is nearly touching his phone screen. “You’re my good luck charm.”
megumi: you too, sidekick.
megumi: and batman. obviously.
The second time, you’re crossing paths in the coffee shop, both of you on your way to other places. It’s brief and stilted and still leaves him feeling like a mess.
“Black?” you ask, nodding at his coffee. You’ve got a hat tugged haphazardly over your head to ward off the persistent snowflakes outside, and it’s—you’re cute. Fuck.
He huffs a laugh, looking down at the sleet-stained floor just to avoid staring at you and your cold-flushed cheeks. “What else?”
“Vanilla latte,” he says, glancing at your cup, because he wants you to know he remembers. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but he thinks you look pleasantly surprised.
The third time, you don’t see him.
He knew you had friends at JU, but he’s never seen you around campus before. You’re with the guy with the blue hair, always pulled up into two knots on the top of his head—Hajime, maybe?
You throw your head back and laugh at something he says, and it’s like—fuck. Laughter shouldn’t sound that poetic.
And he knows he can’t lie to himself anymore.
It’s time to talk.
Kirara would probably kick his ass the second he told her anything. Ino’s busy with his new girlfriend, Yuji’s an idiot, Kugisaki is… well, she’s Kugisaki, and he can’t handle that lecture right now. And he sure as hell isn’t gonna talk to Gojo.
Which means he only has one option.
When he knocks on the door of Tsumiki’s apartment, she takes one look at him and sighs, long-suffering.
“You finally ready to talk?”
This was probably a grave miscalculation. If Kirara would kick his ass for the way he treated you, Tsumiki might actually hang him from his ankles out the window and leave him to die. But not before he apologizes to you. So at least he’s got time.
He walks in without responding and ignores her invitation to sit, pacing the kitchen instead in an uncharacteristic show of nerves. “I fucked up.”
“Yeah, I gathered,” Tsumiki says dryly, but she hops up onto the counter and looks at him, patient as ever. Tell me, she doesn’t say, but Megumi hears it anyway.
“I think I might be in love.”
—
To her credit, Tsumiki is dead silent for the entirety of Megumi’s rambling explanation. He’s a little hoarse by the end of it—honestly, he never talks like this. He feels like he just dumped his heart onto his sister’s kitchen floor and is awaiting some sort of judgement.
“Also, I think she hates me,” he finishes, finally sinking into a chair at the kitchen table. He tilts his head back and stares at the popcorn ceiling. “And I deserve it.”
For a beat, Tsumiki is silent. And then she says, “You wrote a song about her.”
He snaps his gaze to her so aggressively it hurts his neck. “What?”
She rolls her eyes and pulls something up on her phone, sliding up the volume and pressing play. She scrolls to some random point in the song, and Ino’s voice sings, “She’s got me up late starin’ at my phone, waitin’ for a text, feelin’ all alone.”
“Tsumiki—”
She turns it up, and Megumi looks anywhere but at his sister. There are plants everywhere, warm light filtering in through the windows onto herbs on the kitchen windowsill and succulents in the living room and god, everything reminds him of you.
“And she don’t even know what she’s doin’ to me, all my hopes are high-strung and she’s just gonna leave, no!”
“Okay! Okay, stop, I get it,” he huffs, dragging the heel of his palm down his face and trying to ignore her smug smile. “How did you even know?” he mumbles. “I’m not on the credits.”
“I know you,” she says dryly. “I also know Ino, and his lyrics are not that… I don’t know, poetically nihilistic.”
“I really can’t tell if you’re trying to insult or compliment me right now,” he says, sighing.
“Also,” Tsumiki says pointedly, “because this is what you do, Gumi.” He gives her a quizzical look in lieu of a response. “When people get close to you, you lash out and then you run away.” She hops off the counter and crosses the room to the table, pulling out a chair across from Megumi.
“No, I don’t,” he grumbles, tilting his chair away on its back legs and inadvertently proving her point.
She just looks at him until he relents, burying his face in his hands.
“I don’t think it’s unprecedented,” Tsumiki says gently, “considering the way we grew up. But you can’t keep shutting down good things, Gumi. You wouldn’t even be friends with Itadori and Kugisaki if they hadn’t forced their way past your bullshit. And you love them, right? They’re great. You know they’re not gonna hurt you.”
“Nobody knows that,” he huffs. “College will end and we’ll all go our separate ways and I’ll never hear from—”
“Nope,” Tsumiki says loudly, cutting him off. “Okay. My turn to talk. Shut up.” She glares at him, planting her elbows on the table. He feels stripped raw. “The whole pushing-people-away-before-I-get-hurt thing? You need to stop. You cannot look me in the eyes right now and tell me you don’t have people who would die for you, Gumi.”
He opens his mouth to object, but she swipes a hand through the air, silencing him. “I’m not done.” Megumi has only seen his sister like this a few times in his life, and he is fairly certain that if he tries to interrupt her again he might not leave this apartment alive.
“You have me. You have Gojo. You have Geto and Shoko and Nanami. You have all of your housemates, and Kugisaki, and probably all of her housemates too,” she says. “And none of us are going anywhere, okay? No walking out on the kids, no betrayal, no kicking you to the curb. So you need to get your head out of your ass, Megumi.”
Well.
“Look. It’s a defense mechanism. I get that,” she says, a little gentler now. “But you are not doing yourself any favors. And this girl? You’re in love with her, Gumi. That means she’s pretty special, okay? Because I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you look twice at a girl in your whole life. And I know she doesn’t deserve this, just as much as you know. So you have two choices.”
Megumi doesn’t think he’s going to like either of the two choices.
Tsumiki leans back in her chair, shrugging. “You can let her move on without you and keep screwing yourself over, or you can go tell her you fucked up and ask her to forgive you.”
He’s never liked asking for things. Tries to avoid it, actually. But he’s finding there are a lot of rules he’s willing to break when it comes to you.
“But if you’re going to ask this girl to step back into your life, you need to make sure you’re ready for it,” his sister says firmly. “You need to have your shit together. You need to know how you feel.” She pauses, catching his gaze, and once she has it she might as well be holding his face in her hands. He can’t look away, not when she’s looking at him this intently, like she’s waiting for an answer she already knows. “So. How do you feel?”
When he doesn’t answer right away, Tsumiki knocks on the table, like a dismissal. “Okay. You think about that, and when you know—you know.” She looks at him for a long moment after he stands up, those eternal curled locks of hair falling into her face, and he’s suddenly hit with a wave of affection, of gratitude, so strong he can barely stand it. Yeah, so he doesn’t have a mom. And fuck his dad. But Tsumiki—thank god he has his sister.
“Miki,” he says, before he can stop himself. “Uh—thank you. I…” He swallows once, hard. “Love you.”
Her smile is slow but wide, the kind that makes her eyes narrow just a little. “I love you too,” she says softly, and then she winks. “Hey, those words? That’s a real good start.”
—
When Megumi sees you next, he’s going to be ready. Just like Tsumiki said. He needs to know how he feels. So he thinks, and he thinks, and he thinks.
There’s a notebook in the bottom drawer of his desk, scrawled song lyrics he’ll never let anyone see. He fills page after page after page trying to figure out what’s going on in his head, in his heart, how he can make it make sense. Fit together like two hands, two sets of prints in the snow. He tries to imagine what he’ll say to you, how you’ll react, but every word he thinks of falls short, everything just sounds stupid in the face of how much you deserve and how little he can give.
He keeps thinking.
It’s December 19, Kugisaki’s Christmas party before everyone parts ways for break.
Megumi won’t admit it, but he’s having a good time. He brought the dogs, and he and Yuji have been bouncing around talking to their friends. Tsumiki’s here too, and when he loses track of Yuji he makes his way over to her, leaning silently against the wall.
“They’re cute,” she says fondly, and he follows her gaze to the hall—Ino is standing there with his girlfriend, Skipper, and there’s mistletoe hanging right above them. No doubt Kugisaki’s doing. Skipper laughs and pecks Ino on the lips before he says something and drags her down the hall, and then Maki and Yuta glance up at the mistletoe, look at each other in mutual horror, and pointedly do not walk beneath it. They’re finally together, but they wouldn’t be caught dead kissing in front of other people.
And he wonders what you’d do, if you were here standing under it with him.
He doesn’t have to say anything. Tsumiki reads him like a book.
It’s like this:
Megumi is very well-acquainted with loss. But he’s not sure he can handle this one.
He let his own insecurities ruin a good thing, a bright thing. He shut it down before it could start. He struck first and he fucking regrets it.
That’s it, then. Pity party over. Delusions down the drain. It’s time to get over himself, to get real.
Because the truth of it is that he doesn’t give a shit about his birthday, about Christmas, about the trees and the lights and the stupid fucking carols, if you’re not there with him.
Oh, he thinks. His sister has the audacity to smirk.
He stays, because this is Kugisaki’s party and despite everything, he does love her. He’s getting better about that, about acknowledging it—he has people who care about him, and he has people he cares about.
But when he heads out just a little bit early, after whispering your name in Kugisaki’s ear, she nearly slaps him for not going sooner.
“Shiro, Kuro,” he calls, heading for the door. “C’mon. We’ve got somewhere to be.”
PART II // TO TRYING
FOR A WEEK after Megumi walks out your front door, you drown in self-pity like the flower you killed in September with too much water.
And then you open your computer and type his name into the search engine with jujutsu university and band. It’s not hard to find—one of the first results is some Instagram advertisement about a Battle of the Bands at JU, from a couple of weeks ago. One of them’s got to be his. You could just ask Nobara, but—it feels weird, somehow. Wrong. Like you’re encroaching on part of his life that he so clearly doesn’t want you to be a part of.
You can’t helping asking her to check on him, though. You just—it’s probably stupid, but you want him to be okay. Not that you think him pseudo-dumping you would tear him up or anything. But there’s a not insignificant part of you that doesn’t believe what he said that day. Part of you that knows a defense mechanism when you see one.
The thing is, you could’ve asked your friends about him. Hajime goes to JU. He might know Megumi, and if not he could’ve found out. But you wanted this for yourself, this mystery of earning his first name and his history and his heart, except you thought you’d gotten two of the three and it turns out he’ll only ever give you one.
You start typing in the bands one by one, figuring eventually one of them has to be his. A search for Black Flash turns up an artist image of a group of people surrounding a grinning girl with bright blue hair. No Megumi, though.
Shibuya Incident, then. You key it into Spotify and rub your eyes when the artist profile comes up, like you’re maybe seeing it wrong. No. It’s him.
There’s a dark-haired girl who must be Kirara leaning on a familiar-looking guy with pink hair, face split open in a smile. Front and center is a brown-eyed boy with a beanie tugged lopsided over his hair. And in the back, standing, looking characteristically bored, is Megumi Fushiguro.
Why are you doing this? You shouldn’t be doing this.
But you’re scrolling before you know it. Most popular songs. They have an EP called Over Duress. And they have a single—released recently, it looks like.
Strike First.
You only allow yourself one second of hesitation before you press play.
“Catch feels real quick,” a voice sings—Ino, must be. “And they go real deep.” You can’t help paying attention to the bassline. It’s steady, constant, holding the rest of the band together as Ino sings. The lyrics almost sink into the background until the chorus snags your attention, and you have to go back and replay it.
“I can hear the heartbreak saying, ooh, I’m on my way. So you strike first, strike first ‘cause she’s not gonna stay.”
Oh.
You understand, then, even if his name isn’t listed in the writing credits, even if you have no proof. Megumi wrote this song. You can hear him in the unfamiliar voice of the lead singer. You can feel him in the pattern of the words. It’s his.
He didn’t want you to leave, so he left first. Is that it?
You understand, but it’s not enough. Abruptly, you’re just—you’re angry. What a stupid reason to let something fall apart. You don’t owe him patience. If he’s not ready to commit, that’s not your problem, it’s his. He needs to figure himself out, learn to let people in, and you can’t just sit here and wait for him to do it. It’s not your responsibility.
It’s not.
There’s some sort of grim satisfaction in knowing that there’s nothing else you could have done.
“Forget that,” you mutter, closing out of Spotify and intending to just toss your laptop on the bed. Case closed. Moving on.
But something in your search results catches your eye first.
JU senior issued DUI after crash on 34th and Olson Blvd Friday night
Okay. So. Nothing to do with Megumi, right? Except it’s showing up in your search of his name. You click on the article, heart suddenly pounding.
Jujutsu University Campus Police responded to an emergency call at 11:41 last night after an automobile collision on 34th Street and Olson Boulevard, four blocks from the popular campus live music bar, The Fix.
“No,” you breathe. “What the fuck?” You keep skimming, everything in you loosening up when it says nobody was seriously hurt, but it just—whose car is that, Yuji’s? It’s bright red. Not Megumi’s.
You’re not really thinking when you make the call. It rings for so long, and right as you’re about to give up, he’s there on the other end of the line, and you realize you have no idea what you’re supposed to say.
“Hey?”
“Um. Hey.” You sound more breathless than you should, just sitting here on your bed with your laptop open to a student news publication. You don’t wait for him to ask why the hell you’re calling, barreling on before you lose your nerve. “I just saw this article about a car crash? Are you o—”
“I’m fine,” he says quickly. Defensively. Oh.
Right. This is overstepping, probably. He doesn’t need you checking up on him. You should’ve just texted Nobara. You should’ve just not read the article, actually, shouldn’t have typed his name into your search engine. He probably thinks you’re a creep who put Google alerts on for his name or something. You don’t have any real excuse for how you stumbled across this fucking article.
But then he says, “Sorry. I’m—yeah. We’re all fine.”
Thank god, you think. But you just clear your throat a little and say, “Okay. That’s—that’s good. I just… wanted to make sure.”
The silence is so long you think for a moment that he’s hung up on you. But then, very quietly, he says, “Thank you. I… appreciate that.”
You don’t really know where to go from here. He’s fine. Of course he’s fine. Why the hell did you call him in the first place? It’s not like he’s going to offer you any information. Because he doesn’t tell you anything, which was the whole problem in the first place—
“It was my cousin.”
You blink.
“Drunk. On the phone with his ex.”
“Oh,” you say, more of a surprised noise slipping out before you can bite it down. It’s less shock at the actual words than the fact that he’s giving you something, that he’s offering you this. You scroll down in the article. Naoya Zenin. The senior in the headline who got a DUI. “That’s… awful.”
“Yeah,” Megumi breathes. “Um. Yeah, he’s taken care of now.”
“Good. That’s good.”
Batman chooses this moment to start barking at absolutely nothing out the window. He actually has been a lot better about that recently, but it’s like it’s his mission today to embarrass you on the phone with the guy who dumped-not-dumped you.
“There he goes,” Megumi says lightly, and you laugh a little, because he sounds almost fond when he says it.
“There he goes,” you echo. “I should… go calm him down. I’ll…” What? You’ll what? See you around? No you won’t. Talk to you later? Unlikely.
“Yeah, yeah, go,” he says. “Um, good… luck.” With what? Batman? Life?
“Thanks. Bye, Fushiguro.”
You slam your finger down on the red button before he can reply.
You don’t want to know what he says. Your name, or sidekick, or Robin, or nothing at all.
—
You try to forget about him, but it’s hard.
Every time your phone buzzes with a message from your friends, classmates, family, your heart jumps, foolishly thinking it might be him. You follow Batman to the dog park without making the conscious decision to, and berate yourself when you realize, lead him off in another direction. Your rosemary plant dies and you hear him in your head, teasing you—isn’t the environment your whole career? Better shape up, sidekick.
Riko prepares a half-hour long PowerPoint presentation about all the reasons he didn’t deserve you in the first place. She must’ve told your roommate, too, because Suko calls you in the middle of the night, Japan time, just to check in.
A week into November, it’s dulled a little bit, the hurt. You’re still startled when he shows up at the dog park, but… not unpleasantly so.
“Snowprints,” he says when you ask if he knew you were here. One word, but it means more to you. Snowprints means he knew what he was walking into, and he came anyway. Snowprints means he saw a chance and followed it to you on purpose.
That’s progress, isn’t it?
You see him at the coffee shop and he remembers your order. It shouldn’t mean anything, but it does. Snowprints and a vanilla latte.
He said he didn’t want this, but you just… don’t believe him.
But you’re not waiting for him. If the cute guy from ecology asked you out tomorrow, you’d say yes. This boy isn’t dictating your life while he figures himself out.
You hope he does figure himself out. But you won’t hold on to scraps.
And you do start to forget, a little. The cute guy in your ecology class does not ask you out, but your friends and your studies and your needy dog are enough of a distraction that Megumi isn’t in the front of your mind all the time. The semester is flying by, and you make an effort to keep in touch with Nobara despite everything—she really is fun.
It’s approaching break before you know it, and you’re going home for the holidays soon, though you’ll probably be back before the new year because Setsuko needs a ride. Man, you’re excited to have a roommate again.
Your suitcase is half-packed, poorly folded clothes covering the whole of your bedspread in some futile attempt at organization. Christmas is in six days—well, five, you think idly, glancing at the clock. Half past midnight. You should go to sleep, but your bed is covered in clothes and you need to finish packing for your drive home in two days.
“Hey, no,” you lecture as Batman sniffs at a shirtsleeve dangling over the side of the bed. You can tell he’s considering making the leap and taking a nap on top of all your freshly laundered clothes. “No. Stay down.”
You push to your feet, yawning, and then Batman freezes in place, his ears perking up and forward like he hears something.
“What’s up?” you mutter, and then his head snaps toward the door. “Dude, what? It’s past midnight—”
The doorbell rings.
“The shit,” you mutter, trudging to the front door. Irrationally you wonder if your roommate’s home early, but that’s stupid—she’d have needed a ride from the airport, and she has a key.
You don’t know what you expect when you nudge Batman aside and open the door into the cold night, barely holding him back from the cracked door with your leg.
Oh.
You’re face to face with Megumi Fushiguro, and your heart does a diving, spinning leap into the bottom of your stomach.
His lips are slightly parted like he stopped speaking mid-word, eyes wild with urgency, and you suddenly wonder if he’s in trouble, if something’s really wrong. Snow peppers his dark hair, the porch light bouncing off the white specks and making him look like he’s sparkling.
You can’t find any words. None at all, nothing that can actually articulate the shock and confusion and barely-squashed hope. What is happening?
“Robin,” he says. And then he says your name, your real name, and—it’s like a dam breaks.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so fucking sorry. I—I’ve had some time to think and I really, really messed up and I don’t know how I’m ever going to make it up to you but I have to try to explain, I—it’s me, it was all me, all my fault, you’re amazing and I’m insecure and I let that get in the way of something really fucking good and that was stupid, so stupid, and I like being with you and I like knowing you and I want you to meet my friends and my weird messed-up family and I want you to know me, I want to let you know me, and I’m sorry I didn’t just because I got too in my own head about it, about you. You take up so much headspace it’s insane and I haven’t stopped thinking about you since—since, I don’t know, since I fucking met you, and I—”
The multi-colored Christmas lights strung between the pillars of your front step cast colors and shadows over him as he rambles, his cheeks red from the cold and maybe something else, and you can’t take it, watching him like this, desperate.
“Fushiguro.”
But he’s on a roll now, the words spilling from him like they’ve been building up in the hollow space of his throat for years, and he’s not stopping now. You’re not sure he even hears you over the rapid, panicked lilting of his own confession.
“You should turn around right now, slam the door in my face, I get it, I deserve that, and I don’t have any excuse that matters, but I realized how important you’d become and that scared me more than anything I’d ever felt because that meant I could lose you, you could leave—”
“Fushiguro.”
“And it’s—I fell in love with you months ago,” he breathes. “I’m sorry, and I love you, I’m so in love with you, and I—”
“Megumi.”
He finally stops, panting, every part of him frenzied and undone. His lips are still parted around a word he hasn’t said, freeze frame, the remote in your hands. “Will you just come inside?”
The silent second feels like ages, years, maybe, and you can see the disbelief in his irises, like he’s afraid to trust this, afraid to hope.
“No,” he breathes suddenly, and something comes dangerously close to cracking in your heart. Did he come here, say all this, only to leave you again?
“I—”
“No, because I brought the dogs and they’re sitting in the back of my car right now,” he explains, sheepish. An unbelieving, slightly hysterical laughter bubbles up out of you, warm and surprising and not at all unpleasant.
You grab Megumi by the dark fabric of his coat and yank him toward you, pressing your lips to his cold ones, hand slipping up to tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck. It’s like your warmth leeches into him limb by limb, slowly unfreezing him both from the cold and the frantic fear that you’d turn him away again, and it’s below freezing but he’s melting beneath your touch, and you missed him so, so much.
You pull back, your breath fogging in the air like an echo. “You idiot,” you tell him. “Go get them, I want to see them.” You cross your arms over your chest, leaning on the doorjamb and finally processing how cold it is out here. It’s like it’s sinking right into your bones. “And then get your ass inside.”
He smiles breathlessly, standing still for a moment, and then it’s like he just snaps into action, like he’s afraid you’ll change your mind if he waits another second. The dogs run up the path before he does, and you let them barrel into you and then have their little reunion with Batman while Megumi catches up.
“Come sit down,” you tell him, shutting the door and closing out the cold air. “And tell me more.”
It’s almost like nothing ever changed.
You talk for hours in the lamp-lit living room, surrounded by three tired dogs and a record spinning in the corner. But this time, Megumi talks more than you’ve ever heard him talk. He tells you everything.
How he pushed you away and justified it to himself by saying you deserved better, when really you deserved the truth. How his dad left and his mom died young and Gojo was barely legal when he took him in. How he had a lot of issues with his self-worth growing up, and even now, and how it took him a very long time to accept that people care about him. How it was Tsumiki's idea to get the dogs, because after their mom died he couldn't stop having nightmares. How he wanted to call you every day and then he finally cracked and he went to Tsumiki and she psychoanalyzed him at the kitchen table and he sorted out all his shit so he could show up here like an absolute nuisance and beg you to give him another chance.
“That’s all I wanted, you know,” you tell him, the both of you on the floor, leaning against Shiro and Kuro as they sleep. Batman’s made himself comfortable on the couch, occasionally using his vantage point to lick you right in the face. “You, being honest. You didn’t have to tell me about your parents, y’know, if you didn’t want to. But just…”
“I know that now,” he murmurs sheepishly. “I’m sorry. Really. But I’m trying to get over the whole self-sabotage thing. Trying to… try. In general. With people.”
And he means it. Because the only time Megumi has ever lied to you was the day he told you he didn’t want this, and you knew even then that it wasn’t true. He might try to be all stoic and poker-faced, but he’s not a very good liar. You smile. “That’s a good start.”
You’re facing each other, knees touching, and you reach out, hand palm-up between you. He glances at you before he makes any move, like he’s asking—are you sure? But then he laces his fingers through yours. His hands are way bigger than yours, fingers folding over your own, warm and encompassing. Something about it feels very right.
“So I was wondering,” he starts, and this new side of him that is so hesitant but also hopeful is maybe the most endearing thing you’ve ever seen. You squeeze his hand a little, and that seems to embolden him enough to ask whatever it is waiting on the tip of his tongue. “Uh, would you… want to meet my housemates?”
—
“They’re crazy,” Megumi says, standing outside his house with you the next day. “I mean it. I don’t know how to prepare you for—”
“Megumi,” you cut him off, laughing. “No disclaimers. I’m friends with Riko, remember?” This actually seems to be an effective argument, because he smiles a little, putting his hand on the door.
“Yeah, okay. That’s fair.”
You are tackled the second you cross the threshold.
“Hi!” someone practically shouts in your ear, full-on bear-hugging you as you stumble back, laughing.
“Oh my god,” Megumi groans. “Itadori—”
“Sorry!” he yelps, pulling back and awkwardly offering a hand like he didn’t just squeeze the living daylights out of you. “I’m Yuji. Kugisaki’s told me all about you and Fushiguro said—”
“Itadori,” he says again. You immediately understand what Megumi meant. This boy is legitimately no different than the two dogs who have come to crowd around your legs. Actually, Shiro and Kuro have greeted you significantly more calmly than Yuji has. It’d be difficult not to like him, you think.
“No, you’re fine,” you laugh him off, using the handshake to pull him back in. “You’re fun. I like you.” Yuji grins victoriously at Megumi and lets you go, and you finally move out of the entryway and into the familiar living space.
“Ino,” you say, pointing at the boy in a beanie, and then shift to the girl crouched in front of the TV, rummaging through a bunch of games. “Kirara.”
The conspiratorial smirk Kirara gives you—along with the way the Wii games are scattered all around her like a personal hurricane—makes you think she might not actually be the long-suffering order in a house full of chaos. More likely, she and Ino and Yuji are only kept in check by Megumi’s neat freak tendencies and blunt nature.
“Hey.” Ino grins. “Okay, I gotta ask, is your dog actually named Batman? Because that’s awesome.”
“She’s been here for two seconds,” Megumi chides, but you nod happily. You are very proud of your dog’s stupid name.
“Well, I approve,” Ino shrugs, patting the space next to him on the couch.
And it feels natural, the way you fall into place with the rest of them. For all Megumi pretends they drive him insane, it’s obvious he loves his friends, and he seems relaxed around them even as you waste away the afternoon chatting and arguing and getting your ass kicked in Mario Kart (specifically by Kirara, whose undefeated record pisses off all the boys but makes you even fonder of her).
By the time night falls, you feel like you’ve been friends with all of them for years. You learn all about the band—Megumi didn’t tell you that they won the Battle of the Bands, which you plan to give him shit for later. They ask you about your school and friends and seem to actually, genuinely want to meet them.
You go home for Christmas, getting your annual few rare days of quality family time, but Megumi sends you photos from Gojo’s with Tsumiki and the dogs. You respond with a picture of Batman in a Santa hat.
megumi: they really want to meet you when you get back. if you want.
A smile splits across your face before you can stop it. Because this is exactly what you wanted—for Megumi to want you to meet his family, to know that part of his life.
“What are you smiling about?” your dad asks from the couch, and your blush must be answer enough, because he turns to your mom with a raised brow and mouths boy. You shove your phone in your pocket. You weren’t prepared for the interrogation, but it’s too late now.
The thing is, if your family had asked you if you were seeing anyone even last week, you’d have had nothing to say. And maybe you shouldn’t dump all this information on them when it’s still so fresh, so new.
But something tells you this is going to last. He wants you to meet Tsumiki, to meet Gojo. You won’t keep him from your family if he doesn’t keep you from his. Plus, your parents leave on another trip in two days. You’re not sure when else you’ll get the chance to tell them this in person.
“So,” you say, before they can start grilling you. “His name is Megumi.”
—
There are prints in the snow.
It feels uncannily familiar, walking your usual path with Batman and seeing the two sets of paw prints and accompanying boots. You place your own footsteps in their wake, laughing at how they dwarf your own shoe size.
You aren’t supposed to see Megumi until he picks you up to go to Gojo’s tonight, but it seems fate—or Batman—has other ideas.
You let him drag you all the way to a big, snowy clearing, where you see your boyfriend and Kuro standing in the snow. It takes you a whole five seconds longer to make out Shiro, who basically blends right into the landscape.
The dogs, per usual, see you first, and Megumi turns at their excited noises to see you. He wastes no time setting off across the field toward you, and you grin, meeting him in the middle.
“So is this a coincidence, or is someone following me?” he asks, meeting you at eye-level as you crouch to greet the dogs. Batman basically shoves his nose in Megumi’s face in response.
“Snowprints,” you say, gesturing to the trail behind you. “Seems to be a theme.” Behind the wall of Kuro’s dark fur, you plant your hands in the snow, letting a mischievous smile grow on your lips. “Anyway, I’m glad I ran into you, because—”
You throw a massive snowball right at Megumi’s face.
“Oh,” he says, swiping a gloved hand across his eyes but leaving flakes of white stuck in his brows, on his lashes. “You’ve done it now.”
“Protect me,” you whisper to Kuro, and then you run.
All-out war. The dogs are thrilled at every snowball that misses its mark, all of them leaping to catch the wayward projectiles in the air, and you and Megumi chase each other and trip over the snow and wind up in a big, snow-covered mess on the ground, staring up at a shockingly bright afternoon sky.
You can barely breathe, you’re laughing so hard. “You’re crazy,” you pant, pushing yourself up onto your elbows, then your palms. An absolute mess of snowprints—his, yours, Shiro’s, Kuro’s, Batman’s—cross over each other in the snow, revealing patches of browning grass here and there, showing the signs of your battle. “Aw, hey. It looks like a giant heart.”
“Sap,” Megumi snorts.
“Buzzkill.”
“Instigator.”
“Oh, yeah?” You grab a fistful of snow and put it right on his head, letting it melt into his tousled, snow-streaked hair. “Well, I’ll instigate, then.”
He laughs, shaking his hair out like a dog, and tackles you back into the snow. “Then I’ll instigate something else.”
You’re so cold you can barely feel half your face, but it doesn’t matter. Not when he kisses you like this.
—
The first thing you think when Satoru Gojo opens the door is damn, he’s tall.
The second is holy shit, those are the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
“Gumi!” he shouts, enveloping him in a very one-sided hug.
The third thing? Yeah, you like him.
“Gojo,” Megumi grumbles, half-heartedly pushing him away, but the fondness of the interaction doesn’t escape you.
“And I’ve heard all about you,” Gojo grins, pulling you into a hug as well—you don’t hesitate to hug him back, because now you know exactly what this man has done for Megumi and Tsumiki. And he’s important to Megumi, so he’s important to you.
Megumi telling you about his childhood and Gojo was one thing, but him actually wanting you to meet his family is another. You feel warm all over as Gojo ushers you into the apartment, where Tsumiki is already busy making dinner. She nearly drops the pan in her hands at the sight of you. “Hi!”
“You all hug so much,” Megumi says flatly when she hugs you too, and she just grins and forces him into an embrace as well.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”
“Shut up.”
“Love you too.”
“So,” Tsumiki says, turning back to the stove and insisting you sit down and make yourself at home when you offer to help. “Tell me about you.” Instead, she enlists Megumi to be her kitchen assistant, and you aren’t sure why it’s so surprising that he knows how to cook, but it is.
The four of you talk about school and the dogs (who are at home with Suko, now that she’s finally back from Japan) and your families and friends, and you can see Megumi growing more comfortable as the night goes on, once he’s sure that Gojo isn’t about to whip out a bunch of embarrassing pictures of him as a kid or tell you all his darkest secrets. Tsumiki is sweet and you take a liking to her immediately, talking all about her job running the campus paper. Gojo tells you about the bar he works at, about his college friends who founded it.
“Do you have to work tomorrow, then?” you ask between bites of the best meatballs you’ve ever had.
Gojo shrugs. “Yeah. But if I wasn’t, I’d be hanging out with all the same people I work with, anyway. Not so bad, huh?”
“We’re actually probably going to swing by the bar tomorrow,” Megumi says, avoiding Gojo’s gaze in favor of looking at you. Gojo lights up. It’s endearing, how excited he is at the prospect of seeing all of Megumi’s friends. “You coming?” Megumi asks Tsumiki.
“To the bar or the house party?”
“Both,” Megumi shrugs.
“Only if you are,” she says not to Megumi but to you, teasingly.
“Yeah, I gotta meet the rest of his friends. All of Nobara’s housemates.”
“Oh, I love them!” Tsumiki says. “Mm, you’ll get along with Yuta. I mean, everyone does. Oh god, and Toge. And S—yeah, okay, all of them, actually. Have you met our cousin Maki?”
“No, but they all sound great,” you say honestly.
“They are!” Gojo says loudly. “They can give you so much dirt on Megumi.” Megumi glares at him with a complete lack of heat.
“You and my friend Riko would get along,” you say, but as soon as you say it you’re not sure it’s true. Either they would immediately gang up on Megumi and make his life a living hell, or Riko would have the same dynamic with Gojo and they would argue until somebody threw a punch.
Megumi stares at you incredulously. “They can never meet. Ever.”
Except they do, because you bring Riko to the bar the following night. You feel like this might have been a dire miscalculation, because not only does this mean she’s meeting Gojo, but it means she’s meeting Nobara’s housemate who, in her words, is a kindred “chaos goblin.” This means that they’re both comm majors with too much time on their hands and they make it everyone else’s problem.
Toge Inumaki is the very possibly the only person you’ve ever met who can match Riko in terms of sheer chaos. It is terrifying. They’ve known each other for a grand total of five minutes before they’re planning a full-on bracketed Just Dance tournament with Rasputin as the final battle.
“You’re insane,” you tell Riko fondly, and she grins at you.
“I think we’re brushing over the fact that you think Rasputin is the hardest one on there,” Gojo says, leaning over the bar incredulously.
“What, you think your old man knees can handle it?” Riko asks shamelessly, and you excuse yourself as they launch into bickering worthy of siblings.
But nothing explodes, and you meet Shoko and Geto and Utahime and Nanami, and all of Nobara’s housemates, including Megumi’s cousin. She’s very no-nonsense in a way that you appreciate, and after you shit-talk Naoya with her, you feel like you’re probably going to be very good friends.
It’s well past eleven by the time you all get back to Megumi’s place, leaving Gojo to ring in the new year with his own friends. Someone puts the ball drop on the TV in the living room and you all scatter across the space, a swell of conversation and laughter as midnight inches closer.
It’s like this:
A living room full of your friends and his, laughing and smiling and teasing and playing Just Dance really aggressively (but that’s just Toge and Riko, really). Megumi’s knee pressed against yours as Tsumiki forces him to smile for a picture with you. Nobara throwing her arms around you, insisting you settle a debate between her and Yuta about the superior shape of pasta noodle. Sneaking off to Megumi’s room while Yuji is distracted, stealing kisses in the dark. Listening to his whispered commentary in your ear as the drinks and sleep deprivation start hitting Toge and Yuta and they get existential on the floor. Suko telling everyone all about Japan and the occult club she started at her university there. Yuji being way too into the idea of starting one between JU and Kaisen, launching animatedly into a discussion of all his favorite conspiracy theories.
Five minutes to midnight, Kirara pops open a bottle of champagne and passes you a glass, and you wave it in front of Megumi teasingly.
“What, you wanna toast to something?” he teases, leaning in toward you. “You gonna say to us? That’s pretty Hallmark movie of you.”
You hum, swirling the glass, lifting your gaze to meet his. “To trying,” you say. “And also vigilantism?”
And there’s his laugh, better than the ball drop, the streamers, the disco ball that came from god knows where in the corner. “I can get behind that,” he says, clinking his glass against yours. “To your superhero dog,” he says, leaning in closer. “And his pretty cool sidekick.” He kisses you as the countdown hits one, and you’re laughing against his lips, savoring the warmth of his hand on the back of your neck.
When he pulls away, it’s only by centimeters, just enough for him to lock eyes with you. “And,” he breathes against your lips, “to trying.”
a/n: sorry this took like twenty years and it's SO LONG. heh. i'm incapable of short-form content. it was fun to write though. let me know what you thought, and be sure to pop over to out of my mind (and, if you're curious about naoya's ex, greta's sukuna spinoff, if you are NOT a minor)! thanks loves :)
summary: at the division one level, tennis is more than a sport. it’s your livelihood, and with your doubles partner maki training overseas for the summer, you know you need to step up your game for your last season. luckily for you, your coach has connections. and who better to train you than a rising star olympian? over the course of the summer, you’ll push each other to your breaking points, and maybe farther. set by set, day by day, you start to untangle the mystery that is yuta okkotsu, the man he is off the court and the force he is on it. you might have finally met your match. but just like always—it’s all in the name of the game.
warnings: swearing, no use of y/n, obscenely excessive use of italics and em-dashes, is it itafushi? probably, dadjo, nobara is a wikipedia truther and you can quote me on that, yuta is a menace on the court, and adorable off of it, miguel lore, boys being cryptic, tennis is confusing
|| sfw. 9.8k words.
“DAMN IT ALL,” Megumi swears as the ball just barely lands inside the white line. He looks at Yuji, drawing his lips into a tight line. “We’re getting our asses kicked.”
Yuji, per usual, is here for the thrill of the game and nothing else. “But it’s fun!” he chirps, and Megumi rolls his eyes, long-suffering. You clap Maki on the back as you pass each other, switching sides on the court as Megumi tosses the ball your way.
“Thirty-fifteen,” you call, stepping back and preparing to serve, lining the ball up in the triangular cutout of your racket. Your palm is sweaty around the barely-white grip tape—it’s so goddamn hot today. You hit the ball with a solid thwack, and Yuji dives to slam it back in a perfect backhand. It flies toward Maki’s domain, and she barely has to move to send it back across the net. The four of you volley for a while, sweat beading on your brow, before you finally hit the back corner just out of Megumi’s reach.
“Aha!” you shout, victorious, and Maki knocks elbows with you as she heads for the water bottles lined up near the side of the court. “Suck it, boys.”
“I can’t believe you’re leaving for two months,” you groan, trailing her and leaning your racket against the chain-link fence. You grab your Gatorade water bottle and spray it directly into your face, trying to relieve the heat. You definitely burned today.
“You’ll live,” Maki says as the boys join you, Yuji flopping dramatically onto the hard ground, Megumi staring down at him judgmentally.
“I disagree.”
Maki is going overseas to train one-on-one with a pro tennis player for sixty-three days, leaving you to the wolves. But the wolves are just Megumi and Yuji. And loneliness.
Part of you is worried she’ll come back and just be exponentially better than you. You want her to get better, obviously. But you don’t want to get left behind.
“Aw, would ya look at that!” a familiar voice crows from up the hill leading down to the courts. Gojo grins as he ambles toward you with Shoko trailing behind, like she’s embarrassed to be seen in public with him, which is fair. “Our star pupils practicing all on their own. On a weekend!” He lets himself in through the rickety gate, bowing dramatically to Shoko as he holds it open. She purposely takes a full five seconds to step through, making him stand there.
Shoko raises a hand in your direction, nodding at Maki. “Last day, Zenin?”
“Yes,” you answer for her, trying to cram two months of agony into the single breath of air and directing it right at your best friend. Megumi rolls his eyes, but Yuji hops over and gives Maki a sweaty hug, proclaiming loudly that he’s going to “handle” her cousin in her absence. At some point you figure Megumi’s life has just become one continuous, very long eye roll, for how often it’s his reaction.
“Five tomorrow?” he asks Maki. He’s driving her to the airport at the buttcrack of dawn, which is as close as Megumi Fushiguro gets to an expression of love. You’re just glad you don’t have to get up that early on a Saturday.
She nods, and Yuji sticks out his bottom lip. “I still don’t understand why you have to leave.”
Maki rolls her eyes. “Because when Mei Mei calls and tells you to go to Japan, you fucking go to Japan.”
Yes, you realize that if an Olympian called you to go train abroad for the summer, you’d go. But you’re upholding a double standard and being angsty because you can.
“She’s gonna be brutal,” Gojo whistles lowly, wincing a little as though the thought of training under Mei Mei is less appetizing than going through a meat grinder. But Maki only nods.
“I’m counting on it.” She puts her racket away and slings her bag over one shoulder, taking a step toward the gate of the courts. “You coming?”
Yuji scrambles to his feet and drags Megumi after her, but you wave for them to go on without you.
“I’ll catch up.”
Maki gives you a weird look but doesn’t ask questions, and you watch them start the trek up the hill to the student apartments before turning back to your coaches.
“And what can we do for you?” Shoko asks, brow raised. The speech you rehearsed as you tried to sleep last night seems stupid, now. It’s just Shoko, Gojo, the people who have shepherded you from a high school recruit to a rising D1 star. They’re not going to ridicule you for a request like this.
You know you’re a damn good tennis player. Nobody walks away with this many NCAA accolades without a combination of raw talent and hard work. But all of those titles are only half yours—you and Maki are the most fearsome duo on the court, but you want to be able to hold your own.
“I was thinking,” you start, gaze bouncing between Shoko and Gojo, “that I should try to get some individual training in while Maki’s gone.”
Gojo and Shoko exchange a look that you can’t quite decipher. Sometimes it’s infuriating how long they’ve known each other—they’ve got a whole wordless language down pat.
“I don’t want to hold her back when she comes home some Olympic-level tennis goddess,” you offer, filling the silence.
Shoko gives you a once-over and asks, “Why do you really want it?”
Well, that’s Shoko for you. No mercy.
“Because I’m not the best singles player on this team. I need to get better.” You cross your arms, worrying at your bottom lip. It’s not some form of self-deprecation—it’s just the truth. You’re lethal in doubles, but you want to be on Maki’s level when she gets back, and you want to dominate in singles this season.
“You want to win singles, then,” Gojo says. “For the Accelerator qualification.”
You’ve been read straight through. Open book. Sheer curtain. Only the players who get to the finals in the NCAA Championships qualify for the ITF College Accelerator Program. For singles, not doubles. That program will get you draws in pro tournaments. It’s your golden ticket to your end goal of making it to the Olympics.
There’s also the fact that it’s the second year of the NCAA’s pilot program, the one that puts individual championships before team championships. It basically makes tennis a year-round sport, and the season starts in September for you now, not January. You can feel the clock ticking, constricting around your chest like someone’s hugging you too tight.
“Listen, kid,” Shoko says in that aloof way of hers, smoke-scratchy voice and utter nonchalance always at odds with her sincerity. “You’re the heart of this team. It’s your last year. There’s only so much a couple old guys like us can teach you.”
Gojo’s jaw drops, obviously affronted at being lumped in as a fellow “old guy,” but then he turns to you and sighs. “She’s not wrong. Your skill level’s getting to be beyond this. You’re going places.”
Something in you warms at the praise—Gojo and Shoko were both such phenomenal players in their own primes, and if they really think you’ve exceeded their instruction, that’s more than you ever thought you could do.
“But,” Gojo adds, smirking, “I hear ya. And I agree. No better time for some one-on-one training.” He glances at Shoko, who nods, some unspoken confirmation passing between the two.
“What’re you thinking?” you ask, spinning the grip of your racket between your hands.
Gojo grins. “I know a guy.”
—
It’s weird, being here over the summer without Maki. She’s never really had the best relationship with her family, so she’s stayed on campus with you every year since you met as freshmen.
You know you’re just being dramatic—she only left this morning—but something about knowing that she’s not coming back until August makes it all feel different. Your room feels so vacant.
So you haven’t been spending a lot of time there. Instead, you’re sandwiched between Megumi and Yuji on the couch, eyes glued to the screen of Yuji’s shitty TV as the French Open plays. The men’s singles final.
Everyone knows Ishigori, two-time champion and media favorite (even though you’ve always kind of gotten the impression he’s an asshole), but the guy across the court is a new sensation in the tennis world. You’re pretty sure he’s not much older than you, and he’s already dominating every tournament he enters. You’ve probably crossed paths at tournaments before and just never realized it—there’s something vaguely familiar about his playstyle, the fluid back-and-forth.
“That Okkotsu guy is on something,” Megumi snorts, side-eyeing Yuji as he watches in an absolute rapture. You watch as his hand unconsciously goes back to his bowl for another concerningly large mouthful of popcorn and finds it empty, his eyes never leaving the screen.
“You’re an athlete iPad baby,” you say.
He takes a solid three seconds to register that you were speaking to him and turns with a mouthful of popcorn, which he stole from Megumi’s bowl. “Hmmngnh?”
Your phone buzzes, and you glance down to see a string of disjointed texts.
nobara: THID SUCKS
nobara: I MISS MY FVCIIJG GIRLFIRND
nobara: is life worth living. is it
nobara: the light of my life is in ANOTHER TIME ZONE
nobara: AHHHHHHHHHHHHH
There’s a brief pause, and then:
nobara: okay i’m done now
nobara: wyd
“Kugisaki’s coming over,” you warn, because her text was rhetorical. She has your location and Yuji’s, and one of these days she fully intends to hijack Megumi’s phone and add herself to Find My Friends. Which is probably why he groans and shoves his phone deep into his pocket, unreachable, at your announcement. “She’s having Maki withdrawals.”
“It’s been,” Megumi checks his watch, “thirteen hours.”
Nobara practically busts down the door moments later—meaning she was already well on her way when she started texting you—and flops onto the couch across your lap. “She’s not answering my texts!” she cries, pressing the back of her hand to her head like she’s fainting. “She hates me.”
“She’s on a plane,” Megumi says flatly, not even glancing at Nobara. She’s still in her volleyball shorts, wearing a too-long tennis tournament shirt over it, undoubtedly Maki’s.
She sighs, then mournfully continues as if Megumi hasn’t spoken. “She wants me dead.”
You pull up your messages and shove your phone in her face. “I thought you were done?”
“I’m going through the stages of grief.” She cracks one eye open to glare at you. “Let me live. No, let me die.” Her attention finally turns to the screen as Yuji gasps, nearly dropping his stolen popcorn.
“What?” you ask. “Play it back.”
“No, it’s your fault you weren’t paying attention,” Megumi says, but Nobara wrenches the remote from his hands and skips back ten seconds for you. You smirk at him, victorious.
It’s game point, fifth set, and Okkotsu shifts his weight, lifting the ball to his lips.
“Did he just fucking kiss it?” Nobara asks, and you can’t tell if she’s disgusted or impressed.
He serves. He serves the ball in such a flawless arc that Ishigori can’t possibly reach it, even as he dives to the far back corner of the court. It looks like it’s going out, but Okkotsu is entirely calm.
The ball hits just inside the line. Game over.
“What—who?” Nobara shrieks, whipping out her phone, and you know you don’t have to do any research because your overcurious search engine is still sprawled across your lap. On screen, Ishigori has thrown his racket to the ground, arguing furiously with the ump while Okkotsu strolls calmly off the court, a soft smile on his face.
“Jesus,” you murmur.
“Yuta Okkotsu. I guess he went out to Africa to train up when he was in high school… what the fuck? His ITF rank was forty-two while he was still in college?” Nobara gapes at the screen, scrolling up and down as if the words will change with the movement. “Wait, no, he didn’t go D1. He just came up in the ITF system. So, like, he was in the Olympics. Last year.”
He didn’t look familiar because you crossed paths in D1 competition. He looked familiar because he was in the motherfucking Olympics.
And he just won the French Open. The actual Roland-Garros. Who is this guy?
They’re replaying his ace on the screen, slowing it down, and you watch in complete awe. The trajectory is flawless. There’s no hesitation in his movement. He owns the court.
You’ve seen Olympians play a thousand times before. Legends like Gojo and Geto and Shoko, young stars like Hajime and Tsukomo. But this is something else. How do you not remember watching his matches?
You should go to sleep. Rest, get up early to hit the gym tomorrow, keep on with your summer routine even without Maki at your side. But even as you bid your friends goodnight and settle down in your vacant room, you’re replaying that ace in the back of your mind, over and over and over.
Maybe you’ll do that tomorrow, just drill your serve until you can do what that Okkotsu guy did. Gojo hasn’t given you any more insight on his “guy,” so you’re in the dark until he decides to be forthcoming. He has connections everywhere—that’s what happens when you’re a former Olympian, you figure—but he’s kind of distanced himself from the whole thing, aside from Geto and the other coaches at Kyoto just up the coast. Your best guess is some successful alum.
You’d never say this to his face, but if it’s good enough for Gojo, you trust it’s good enough for you.
—
You’ve been first to the court every day since recruitment, save for that one time you were puking your guts out. That day, you were second.
The sun isn’t even visible in the sky yet, the Thursday morning atmosphere hazy and gray, as you reach the crest of the hill that leads down to the tennis courts, and it takes a moment for you to resolve the movement you’re seeing near the edge of the fence.
Somebody else is there first.
You try not to be irritated as you make your way down to the courts, trying to figure out which of the guys has pulled their ass out of bed early enough to get here before you. But the closer you get, the clearer the figure slamming balls off the fence gets… it’s not any of them. You know all of the guys’ playstyles, their form, like the back of your hand.
This guy is tall, lanky but lean, and he swings in movements that feel so casual but are so quick that they have to be calculated. He’s just warming up, but you can tell he’s good.
When you reach the gate, you sling your bag onto a bench and dig around inside for a few balls to use for warmups.
And when you turn around, you come face-to-face with an incredibly attractive, very unexpected man. Dark hair, wide brown eyes that close as he sheepishly grins at you, then look down and finally up.
“Holy shit!”
You last saw this guy on the screen the same day Maki left, dominating the French Open like it was an afterthought. And now he’s standing on your court, the fingers of one hand curled around the chain link, and he’s smiling like this is an everyday occurrence.
“Sorry!” he laughs. “Did I scare you?”
All the words that might’ve been adequate responses wither away and die in your throat. You stare blankly at Yuta Okkotsu and open your mouth, close it, clear your throat. “Um—I—you’re…”
“Oh my gosh, sorry,” he says, scratching the back of his neck like he’s the one who should be self-conscious right now. “I should’ve introduced myself. I’m Yuta.” He holds out a hand, and it’s taking everything you have to not immediately say I know. “My coach is an old friend of your coach’s. You must be the prodigy looking for extra training, huh?”
You take his hand robotically—warm—and stutter out your own name, nodding. Get your shit together. “Sorry,” you say sheepishly. “I just—Gojo didn’t tell me you were coming today. Unsurprisingly. He likes to be cryptic, y’know.”
Yuta smiles fondly. “Yeah, I remember.”
Remember?
“You’re here to train me,” you say, meaning it to be a statement, but it comes out like a question, words tilting up unsteadily at the end.
Yuta nods, like it’s not a big deal at all that an actual Olympian is standing right in front of you pledging to shepherd you to singles tennis victory. You can’t stop seeing him on Yuji’s TV screen, movements fluid and sharp all at once. Decisive, immediate, victorious. Suddenly your palms are sweating, and the fact that there’s nobody else on these courts feels like a very important fact, something real and expansive.
You, and Yuta Okkotsu.
Well, you think, spinning your racket once in your grip. Time to find out what you’re made of.
“Let’s go, then.” You crack a grin, and Yuta looks pleasantly surprised at the abruptness. Maybe you should be asking him more questions—how he knows Gojo, why he’s helping you, what he wants. But you can’t help but immediately start to size him up as an opponent; the feints and serves and backhands you watched so raptly the other day become calculations, matters of gaining or losing points.
“You don’t want to warm up or anything?” Yuta asks, and it feels like a test. The moment you step onto the court, your exhaustion zaps itself away, melts into the air with the morning dew. You are here to play tennis, and you are here to do it well.
“This is my warmup.” You know you’re out of your depth saying shit like this to a player like him, but you can’t help it. The game is already in your veins, better than caffeine, waking you up and setting you on fire. “I’ll let you start, new guy.”
Yuta doesn’t hesitate for a millisecond. You hadn’t even realized he was holding a ball in his free hand, but it’s coming at you in a half-moment, and you jump back to give yourself enough space to return. You’re not fast enough. The ball’s headed right for no man’s land, and you don’t stand a chance.
“Christ,” you mutter, blinking across the court at Yuta.
He just did the exact same thing to you that he did to Ishigori at the French Open.
Yuta’s eyes are dark even from here, the sunrise making his tensed silhouette appear backlit and imposing. Gone is the happy-go-lucky, shyly smiling boy who introduced himself outside the tennis courts.
This is an Olympian.
“Oh,” you breathe. “So that’s how you wanna play it.”
“New guy, huh?” he says, and it’s still teasing, but not in the light-hearted manner he was speaking before. This is tennis trash talk.
That’s your first language.
You don’t warn him before you pull a ball from your pocket and send it at him, but he doesn’t miss a beat, bringing his racket back with the movement of the ball and then hurtling it back through the air—you can see it in his stroke, the downward slope, he’s doing it again I have to back up—
It hits the ground.
“Fuck!”
Yuta is unfazed. “Again,” he calls, and you don’t question where the balls are coming from, you don’t protest, you just reset, grit your teeth and wait for the strike.
This time, you anticipate the landing spot and you’re ready, slamming the ball back into the air. It’s not a great curve, but it won’t go out. Yuta effortlessly backhands it, and you send it back higher this time, make him reach for it, and—
The ball hits the ground behind you.
“What,” you pant, staring at it, “the fuck.”
“Again.”
Serve. Hit. Volley. Backhand. There’s a curve on that one, little bit of a spiral, underhand, you’ve got it—no man’s land.
“Again.”
Ace.
“Again.”
You’re sweating, and the sun isn’t even all the way above the horizon.
“Again.”
You want to scream, but you just hit the ball harder. Let me be lethal, you think. It doesn’t matter that this man is a professional tennis player. He’s your opponent, and you want to win.
Again.
This one is yours. You can feel it even as you raise your arm for the serve—the wind is barely there but it’s blowing to the right, the ball is an extension of your fingers, the racket is an extension of your mind.
Bam.
It hits Yuta’s far corner. Point, you.
You spin the racket in your hand out of habit, scanning the balls scattered across the far court, and Yuta’s low whistle draws your gaze back to him.
“Damn, Ace,” he says approvingly. Something in you preens a little at the recognition.
“Ace?”
“I’ve never seen an ace like that. The way you move your wrist is…” His eyes are boring into you, like he’s analyzing the very fabric of your being. You don’t let yourself break the eye contact. “This, I can work with.” His smile is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. It’s entirely different from the one he flashed you when he ran into you outside the court. This is sharp, calculating, excited. “So, yes. Ace.”
One small victory in dozens, but somehow it feels more earned than any of your victories, your titles. You’re frustrated and tense and absolutely wired and alive. This is what you wanted.
This is how you become the best.
—
“It’s the way you had an Olympic tennis player in your back pocket this entire time and said nothing,” you say flatly, leaning over Gojo’s messy desk to flick him square on the forehead. He yelps, pulling his legs off the desk and glaring at you. Yuta chuckles from behind you in the doorway, a quiet, shy sound.
“It was a good surprise! Yuta, defend me.”
He steps into the room after you, nudging the door partially closed with his foot. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell her anything.”
“Oh, betrayal.” Gojo clutches at his chest in mock agony. “From the ones I trusted the most… the future of my program…”
“Oh, shut up,” you snort, collapsing into the chair on the other side of the desk. You’ve sat here more times than you can count, felt every emotion there is to feel in this faux-leather chair in the corner office of the athletic department. “I’m not sure I can trust you, anymore. Who else you got up in your contacts, Coach? Beyoncé? Yuki Tsukomo?”
Gojo frowns mournfully. “She blocked me.”
“Which one?”
“Both.”
You tilt your head back to meet Yuta’s gaze, half upside-down from his position in the doorway. You’re glad to find your own confusion mirrored on his face—you’re not the only one who can never tell if Gojo’s joking.
“Okkotsu here knows exactly what you need to learn,” Gojo continues before you can ask any follow-up questions. “You want personal training, this guy can give it to you. I trust him.”
Yuta’s answering smile is soft and almost sheepish, like he thinks he’s undeserving of all the praise. Even the way he holds himself is a total 180 from the way he behaved on the court. You noticed it earlier, the difference between his frazzled introduction and his brutal first training, but this man has a split persona—Olympic athlete, and… Yuta.
You really aren’t sure what to do with either of them.
“How long are you here?” you ask Yuta, kicking out the chair beside yours to gesture for him to take a seat. He doesn’t collapse into it like you did, instead perching on the edge, straight-backed, all proper. You have to bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing. Manners, in Gojo’s office.
“I’ll be in and out, probably,” he says, tilting his head, considering. “I, uh, don’t really need to hit too many competitions since I already…”
“Destroyed everyone in the French Open and secured your inarguable place in the Olympics?” you interject, wry. He blushes, genuinely, just a little, and you lean in despite yourself. “Don’t be shy.”
Gojo, uncharacteristically, doesn’t say anything. He’s leaned back in his rolling chair, studying the both of you like he knows something you don’t.
Yuta clears his throat. “I’ll hit the major slams and a few other comps,” he says. “Might be kind of sporadic.”
“I’ll take what I can get.” And you mean it. As long as this resource is at your disposal, you’re going to take it for all it’s worth—Maki is in Japan training under one of the best tennis players of all time. You’ll be damned if you let her down when she comes back.
Plus, there’s the Accelerator Program. It’s no small motivation.
“And it’s just you?” Yuta asks, glancing between you and Gojo. You hum, considering. It’s not like the rest of your team wouldn’t jump at the opportunity, but selfishly, you want to keep this to yourself. You also don’t want to dump a whole group of college students on Yuta when he only agreed to train one.
“She’s my most motivated player,” Gojo says, “and a lot of the others are working over the summer or are already involved in third-party training programs. I have a pair of guys who might want in on it eventually, but there’s no pressure. I brought you here for Ms. Star Player over here, and I intend for her to have the best season of her career to date.”
You know Gojo recognizes your talent. He’s proven it time and time again, putting in the hours and the words and the competition entries to back them up. But hearing him lay out so plainly that you’re the best player on this team… something about it has heat rising to your cheeks, your eyes trying to find somewhere else to land. It feels stupid to say it’s an honor about a compliment from your coach. But… it kind of is.
He might be a moron, but he’s also gold medalist Satoru Gojo.
“Thanks,” you say, crossing your legs and aiming for casual. If Gojo detects how affected by his words you actually are, he doesn’t mention it.
“You have free reign of the south courts whenever you want,” he says instead, looking at Yuta. “She’s got a key, I’ll get one for you too. Come to me if you need anything, but I know you guys are more than capable of pacing yourselves.”
There’s an easy familiarity when Yuta nods, and now that you’re not on the court, the curiosity is almost all-consuming. “How do you know each other?” you ask, leveling each of them with an appraising look. “I know you said your coach knows Gojo, but who’s your coach?”
Yuta says, perfectly easily, “Miguel Oduol.”
Your jaw hits the ground.
“What?”
You spin to look accusingly at Gojo. “You know Miguel Oduol? And you just never thought to say—oh my God! One of these days I’m enlisting Nobara to steal your phone and go through your contacts.”
She may not be on the tennis team, but she’s around enough that she and Gojo have developed the sort of relationship where they’re constant nuisances to each other. Nobara almost always wins their petty arguments, and she would truly have no qualms about invading Gojo’s privacy.
He rolls his eyes, laughing. “He’s an old friend. We met at the Olympics. I gotta be honest, he’s some of the toughest competition I’ve ever had. Kinda guy that makes you want to get better, so you can hold up against him.” He nods to Yuta. “When I went to see him in Africa, he was already training Okkotsu here, and we played a couple rounds.” He puffs out his chest. “Not just anyone can hold their own against the Satoru Gojo. So I kept in touch.”
And just like that, he’s annoying again.
“I can’t believe you trained under Miguel Oduolo,” you mutter, in awe. “He’s…”
“Okay, yes, he’s cool, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Gojo says placatingly, holding up both hands. “The best coach on the entire planet is sitting right here. So.”
“Cocky,” you say dryly.
Yuta smiles. “Ah, you haven’t changed, have you?”
You snort, Yuta chuckles, and your dynamic has fallen into place just like that. You’re exhausted from the morning’s training, but all you want to do is get back out there, pick apart Yuta’s playstyle even more, serve and rally and hit until he gives you that nod of approval again.
“Yeah,” Gojo says, smirking as he kicks his feet up on his own desk. You reach over and shove his legs off, but he’s unbothered. “I think you’re gonna get along just fine.”
—
“Yuta Okkotsu!” Nobara screeches, grabbing your hands and pressing her face too close to yours. “Yuta. Okkotsu. Yuta Okkotsu!”
“Yes, I heard you the first time, thank you.” You wrench one of your hands free and gently push her face away. “Yeah, I knew he had connections, but it was kind of crazy. He just showed up.”
“Dramatic ass,” Nobara huffs, probably about Gojo. “I cannot believe him. I’m gonna steal his phone and see who else he’s got in his contacts list. I bet he knows some famous volleyball player somehow and he’s just been holding out on me!” She’s too busy rambling for you to explain your laughter, the fact that you already promised him you’d get Nobara to do just that.
“What’s he like?” Yuji asks, peeking over the back of the couch, resting his chin on his folded arms. “Is he crazy? He looks so serious on TV. Did he even talk? Was he awesome?”
“Did he destroy you?” Megumi asks, and you flip him off.
“Ye of little faith.” But—well. Again. Again. Again. “Okay, yeah, a little.”
“Sucker.”
“Nepo baby.”
“Gojo’s not my dad!”
“Yes, he is,” you and Yuji and Nobara say in tandem, and Megumi groans and walks into the other room. You and Nobara high-five without even looking at each other.
“You have to come back,” Yuji yells in Megumi’s general direction. “We’re calling Maki soon!”
It’s a hassle to arrange video calls with your best friend when the time difference is a whopping sixteen hours, but it’s almost eight, which means you should be able to grab her on her lunch break soon. You want to hear all about Mei Mei and Japan, but you also desperately want to tell her about Yuta. About the way he plays, his insane backhand, his killer serve. You need to share this with someone who’s going to be as calculated about it as you are.
Right at eight, your phone lights up with the familiar .5 photo of Maki at last year’s finals. She looks insane with the visor pulled half-down her face (Megumi’s doing) and her hair matted to her face with sweat (tennis’s doing), but you know your contact photo on her phone matches.
You slide to the right without hesitating. “Maki!”
It takes a second for her to settle her phone, probably leaning it against her water bottle on the table, but then she’s there in front of you and it’s like nothing ever changed. The boys and Nobara crowd you in—you’re not sure when Megumi actually did come out of his room—and you grin as Nobara tries to wrestle the phone away from you because oh my god you have to let me say hi to my wife, no I don’t care if she’s not my wife yet, girlfriend privilege comes first, you heathens!
“I leave for a week and you’re all feral,” she rolls her eyes when things have marginally settled down.
“No,” Megumi sighs. “They were like this before.”
He has a point, but Nobara makes an offended noise anyway.
“Maki! Guess who’s fucking training—”
“Hey!” You clap a hand over her mouth. “My story, thank you very much—”
“It’s Yuta Okkotsu!” Yuji shouts, and you groan, releasing Nobara from your hold when she licks your hand in retaliation.
“Okay, first of all, gross.” Nobara beams. “Second of all, shut up.” Yuji looks like a kicked puppy, so you pat him on the head and he perks back up. “Third of all, yes, Yuta Okkotsu showed up at the court with no warning and we played for like, three hours and it was insane and ridiculous and he’s amazing, Maki. Also, I miss you and I can’t take much more of this so please come home.”
Maki stares at the camera and just blinks slowly before letting out a long breath. “Okay. Wow.” She snorts, digging into her food. “First of all, I miss you too, and I am not coming home because this is the most brutal training I have ever experienced and it’s phenomenal.”
She does look exhausted, but in that kind of glowy way you do after a really good practice, when you know you got better because you pushed so hard. Her eternal ponytail is a mess, strands plastered to the side of her face and frizzing out on top, and she’s inhaling her food like she’s never eaten lunch in her life, but you can tell from the set of her shoulders and the way her racket is leaned right up against the table that she already can’t wait to get back to it. She is the only person who’s ever loved this sport as much as you. A kindred spirit. You respected each other from the start, and the friendship built on that respect is one of the best you’ve ever had.
“Homophobic,” Nobara groans.
“We’re literally dating.”
“Ho. Mo. Pho. Bic.”
“Sure, babe.”
Nobara brightens at the term of endearment. “Aw, you do love me!”
“Second of all,” Maki continues through a mouthful of rice, “what the fuck?”
“I know!” You throw your hands up, Yuji having propped your phone up on the crooked coffee table so you’re all in frame. You and Yuji are on the couch with Nobara in front of you on the floor, and Megumi is leaning against the couch’s back, pretending he doesn’t care.
“That’s good, right? You wanted individual pro training,” Maki notes. The thing about Maki is that she only really expresses emotion in three default expressions, which people who don’t know her probably interpret as what the fuck, oh my god, and I hate you. But because you do know her, almost as well as you know your own tennis racket, you read the slight furrow in her brows, the angle of her head, the barely-there nod for what it is: Maki immediately reevaluating her own training in her head, stacking it up against yours, taking what she knows of both of your trainers and figuring out how to best build off each other the moment she gets back.
You nod. “And he’s crazy. Like, he’s nice and everything, don’t get me wrong, but when he plays? He’s so locked in, it’s intimidating. He just served me aces for like, twenty straight minutes until I adapted and then we went from there.”
Yuji’s eyes are wide, paying rapt attention to every word. As you speak, even Megumi seems to tune in with mild interest. “I think this is gonna be really good,” you say, and you mean it.
“Good.” Maki nods once, firmly, and you know she’ll text you about this later, that you’ll give her more details when she’s not in a rush to get back to the court.
“And you?” you push. “Is Mei Mei still making you use the ball machine?”
Maki groans, pitching slightly forward. “Yes, but I swear this thing is on crack cocaine. It is not a normal ball machine, it does three at once and I think I’m bruising from it.”
“So stop getting hit,” Megumi offers unhelpfully, and Maki flips him off.
“You’re gonna get it and then come back here and play like you have six arms,” you say with absolutely zero doubt. Nobody adapts to situations quite like Maki Zenin. She shrugs, which you know is her acknowledging that you’re right.
“Did you name your racket yet?” Yuji interrupts. He’s very insistent that naming tennis rackets creates… something, something about bonding or luck or skill or attachment, between player and equipment. His racket is named Human Earthworm. He very clearly wanted you to ask, so you didn’t.
Nobara named Megumi’s Gerard Way because of the time she caught him listening to Welcome to the Black Parade years ago. Yuji likes to call yours Lightning McQueen because you once made the mistake of saying “kachow” after kicking his ass. The day you started thinking of your racket as Lightning in your head, you almost slammed it into a wall. You can’t believe he got you to do it.
Maki, however, is unrelenting.
“I’m not naming my racket,” she says, and Yuji is already spouting off new suggestions. They get worse every time he tries.
“Tennis Demon,” he says. He’s been really fixated on the demon thing lately. “Slaughter Demon.”
“That’s fucking stupid.”
“You can call it SD for short! Nobody will know—”
“Why are we talking about San Diego?” Gojo asks, poking his head into the room. You didn’t even hear him come in. Megumi pushes off the couch, so evidently Gojo’s here for him—not my dad, sure—but Yuji is now fervently explaining to Gojo that Maki needs to name her racket or she’ll regret it for the rest of her life, which is simply not true.
“Slaughter Demon,” Gojo says slowly. You hope he’s about to ridicule it, but he tilts his head thoughtfully and goes, “Not bad.”
“Oh my god.” You facepalm. “You guys are so stupid.”
“We agree on that, at least,” Megumi says.
“At least? What do you mean, at least?”
“Oh, look at the time,” Megumi says, not looking at his watch or his phone or any form of time-telling device. “Gotta run.”
“Fushiguro, you are going to get it on the court tomorrow!” you say to his back.
“Yep, okay. Going.”
“Where?” Yuji asks, flipping himself upside down on the couch so his pink hair brushes the floor. “Woah,” he murmurs as the blood rush evidently hits.
Megumi is already pulling on his boots. “Tsumiki’s.”
“Family dinner!” Gojo sings.
“It’s not family dinner—”
The sound of their arguing continues all the way into the hall, muffled by the closing of the door. Moments later, Gojo nearly gives you a heart attack when he pops his head back in and points directly at you. “By the way, little star player, you’re meeting Yuta on the court at six. So get some sleep! Or don’t, your funeral.”
And he’s gone.
Nobara snorts and exchanges a look with you, then Yuji. And she says, “It’s so family dinner.”
—
Every morning, you meet Yuta on the court just as the sun is fighting its way over the horizon line. You sweat and hit and rally and serve until your arms feel like they’re going to fall off, and then you run and do weight training and go back to the court until the sun sets. It’s the most brutal training you’ve ever experienced. Sometimes you join the boys in the afternoon, or other teammates will pop in and out of the other complexes. But they gravitate away from you and Yuta most of the time, after they’ve gotten past the novelty of his presence.
Because on the court, he’s a force. He’s a whirlwind. Sharp, fast, unforgiving. You can’t even blame Ino when he sees the pair of you hitting and slinks off the court. Anyone too close will get pulled into this orbit, and you’re pretty sure once you’re in, you can’t ever escape.
You can already feel the results of your training when you play with Megumi or Yuji or the others. Yeah, your muscles burn and you want to sleep for ten years, but you have never been this sharp. You’re playing with a new kind of spatial awareness and anticipation of movement that you know is tangible. You can’t wait to test it against Maki when she gets back, and then with her.
Yuta’s praise is sparse but genuine, and when he tells you you’ve got something right, you know he means it. You find yourself reaching for that acknowledgement day after day, night after night, sunrise to sunset and sometimes in your dreams. It’s become a way of life for you, lately.
He was right about his presence being sporadic. He always tells you when he’s leaving, but he never tells you when he gets back. One day, you just show up to the court and there he is, like the first day all over again, and he says, “So what’d you learn without me?”
And then you play, and play, and play.
After training, you huddle in Gojo’s office to watch film or old matches, sometimes even Gojo’s or Yuta’s or Miguel’s, piecing together different techniques and analyzing your own shortcomings. Conversations about the sport turn into conversations over dinner, and then suddenly sometimes they’re not about the sport at all.
For all his acclaim as a player, off the court, he’s… kind. And shy, sometimes. And interesting.
He started young, like most pros do, and was making waves in ITF by his early teens. He got eliminated back in the 2020 Olympics about halfway through. When Miguel found him, it wasn’t hard to convince him to pack up everything and go to Africa. You don’t talk much about family, but you’ve gathered that he doesn’t have much of it, or at least much that he cares to talk about.
You can’t help thinking of Maki, all the way across the sea in Japan. But it’s different with her, with a number of days to count down, the knowledge that she’s coming back. The concept of her just up and leaving… you know she wouldn’t, and neither would you. You’ve got too much here.
Kenya is even farther from the West Coast than Japan. Did Yuta have nobody to miss?
You learn that he likes soba, and old movies, and running in the cold. He smiles when he’s nervous and kisses the ball before he serves and never talks while chewing. But the most interesting thing you find, you discover when you’re watching your own practice recordings, alone in Gojo’s office with hardly any space between you. You’re both leaning toward the screen, passing a bowl of popcorn back and forth.
“I don’t understand how you move like that,” you admit, side-eyeing him. There’s a grace to his hits that feels unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Like a dance.
“You wanna know the secret?” he asks, his voice a little teasing, so you raise a brow in response and give him your full attention, waiting. His cheeks get a little red, and his hand goes up to fiddle with a strand of his hair, sheepish. “I, uh, actually trained with a katana for a while. Surprisingly transferable skill set. Who knew?”
“The katana? Like—you—the fucking sword?” You find yourself studying him at this new revelation, the set of his shoulders, the definition of his muscles. You can see it, actually, now that he’s said it. He moves like the racket is an extension of himself, but in a wholly different way than you do.
You use it. He wields it.
“That’s what you were doing with Miguel? Being an actual ninja?” you muse. “Damn, Yuta.”
“Well, we didn’t start out like that,” he shrugs, avoiding eye contact now. This is another thing you’ve learned: He’s wary of praise, even if he knows he’s earned it.
You’re perched atop Gojo’s desk, having shoved his mess of disorganized paperwork and god knows what else to the side to make room for yourself. Your laptop is resting atop a crooked pile of books you’re sure Gojo has never touched in his life, hooked up to the TV with an HDMI cord you rescued from the bottom drawer, and you reach forward and tap the space bar to pause the playback.
Yuta’s taken Gojo’s spinning desk chair, and as you tug your legs up onto the desk and sit cross-legged, he turns to face you, one ankle resting atop his knee.
It’s an odd shift in perspective, you being above him. You’ve grown used to the several inches he’s got on you, but now you’re a bit above his eye level. But he still meets your gaze unwaveringly. You like this about him, that he’s always ready to reciprocate the attentiveness you show him.
“So how did you start out?”
He hums for a moment, like he’s piecing his thoughts together. “Miguel found me when I was trying to adapt to a different playstyle than I was used to,” he finally says. “He said I had a potential he hadn’t seen in a long time, but I didn’t know what to do with it. And I kind of felt that, too. I was… lost in it, I guess.”
The weight of his words is tangible, and you know there are more he’s dredging up, so you don’t speak. You lean forward and place an elbow on your knee, resting your chin in your hand, studying him.
The both of you came here right from the courts, so he’s in his standard practice gear, his hair tousled and the hem of his shirt dark with drying sweat. You don’t look much better, loose hair plastered to your temples, and you don’t even want to know what it would smell like if you gave in to your whims and kicked off your sneakers right now. But somehow Yuta makes the disheveled athlete look… attractive. His tee is cut off at the sleeves, and as much as you try to avert your gaze, you can’t help noticing the definition of his abs visible past the stretched-out fabric. The logo on the shirt from some ancient Challenger is faded, the shirt clearly loved and used to its fullest.
You need to stop looking at him so intently. But he doesn’t seem to mind.
“I think he found me at a time when I was really desperate for the guidance,” he finally continues. “I had all this energy. I so badly wanted to play and I just didn’t know how to get to the next level, didn’t know where I was going. I was so… overwhelmed with the competition and the stakes and the schedule and I needed to take a step back and find my roots again. Miguel saw that. He took me right back to the basics, made me build myself up from the ground.”
It’s not dissimilar to what Gojo and Shoko had done to your whole squad the day you first arrived on campus. “You’re here because you’re good enough to play D1,” Shoko had said, pacing the floor of the gym, “but you’re not D1 yet.”
It had been the hardest season of your life.
It made you the player you are today. You wouldn’t trade it for the world.
“And then he said what I was missing was the fluidity,” Yuta goes on. “I think I actually squeaked when he just whipped out a sword. I had no idea what was going on. But I trusted him, so I let him do his thing. And I got better with the sword, and then I realized when the racket was in my hands, it felt the same. I could move with it instead of against it. I could let it lead.” He shrugs. “I got so much better when I was in Kenya. The commentators, the journals, they all said I was a different player when I came back. They… weren’t wrong, I don’t think.”
You’re filing the words into the relevant boxes in your mind as he speaks, holding onto some more than others, fitting pieces together. A different playstyle. Lost. Guidance.
“You were a doubles player,” you realize aloud, everything clicking into place. “In the Olympics. You didn’t play singles. Why…?”
You’re racking your brain trying to figure out if you’ve heard of whoever his doubles partner was, but you’re coming up empty.
“Doubles was my first love,” he shrugs. “I mean, I still love it. But you know as well as anyone there’s more of a pro market for singles. And I’d had the same thought as you, y’know? Had to be able to stand alone.” He bites his lip, considering. “And I couldn’t. I wasn’t a singles player. I didn’t know what I was doing. Miguel, he took everything I was good at from doubles and reworked it into my singles playstyle. I owe him everything, for that.”
You are no stranger to secrets, to the walls people build up around their histories. You’ve encountered it again and again. When you first met Megumi—before you ever called him Megumi, when he was just Fushiguro to you—he hardly even spoke to you. You clocked his weird relationship with Gojo immediately, but whenever you pushed, he shut down. It took a long time for him to actually open up, on his own time, and talk about his dad. Toji Fushiguro, an Olympic sensation who racked up repeat titles before he got caught on steroids and went off the grid. Gojo was a better role model to Megumi than his real dad ever was.
And Maki, her stilted relationship with her twin sister, the complicated network of her family and their absurd expectations. Nobara, how she left everything she knew to get to a city where she could really get good at volleyball, where she could find her own way. Even your coaches and their bizarre histories are still unfolding around you these days. The first time you saw Gojo interact with Geto from the university up the coast, you couldn’t tell if they hated each other or were secretly hooking up.
You know these things take time, and you aren’t a naturally patient person, but tennis has taught you discipline more than anything else. If Yuta wants to tell you why he quit doubles, why he struck out on his own, he’ll do that in his own time.
Even if you really, really want to force it out of him right now.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs, his gaze distant now. “The Olympics… sometimes I think I should switch back. I know Inumaki would. But it might be too late, now, I guess. And…” Yuta shakes out his shoulders, as if to dislodge the concept with it. A nonverbal well, anyway.
Inumaki. It doesn’t ring a bell, and you resolve to look him up later.
“Thanks,” you murmur, trying to channel your appreciation into the word. “For…”
You feel ridiculous, fumbling for words, but he just gives you that soft, off-the-court smile. “No, thank you, actually. For… listening.”
There’s still about twenty minutes left on the film, but it feels like the wrong time to press play. To sink into silence without offering anything in return for Yuta’s openness.
“I don’t know how to be great without Maki,” you confess. He raises a brow, leaning forward a little in his seat.
“It’s always been the two of us. I was never good at singles in the same way—I’ve always operated better as a unit, as a team. And they all say tennis is an individual sport. I feel like I’ve always been behind, in that regard. And I… I’m never gonna make it, if I can’t do both.”
He nods, considering. “Maki,” he says. “She’s older than you, right?”
“Mm. She stretched her eligibility to fifth year.” A lot of athletes do, but you don’t plan on it yourself. Maki wouldn’t be there with you.
“Wait, how old are you? Is that rude to ask?” You grin. You could just ask Nobara, who has bookmarked Yuta’s Wikipedia page like the stalker she is, but the primary source is right here.
“Twenty-two,” he says. The same age as Maki.
“Damn.” You sigh, stretching out your legs and letting them thunk against the side of Gojo’s desk. “One year on me and you’re already an Olympian. What am I doing with my life?”
He laughs, a bright, quiet sound. “Earning it,” he says. “Skipping out on the college thing—sometimes I wonder if that was the wrong move. I guess everything worked out. But your coaches, your teammates? That’s what’s making you better every day. I don’t know that there’s anything more valuable than that.” He shrugs. “So hang onto it while you can.”
You nod, thinking of your teammates, your friends. Not just on the women’s team, but the boys, too. Kirara and Riko, Mimiko and Nanako. Megumi and Yuji, Ino and Hakari. Maki. Gojo. Shoko. Kusakabe and Akari, your assistant coaches.
Yeah. You wouldn’t give them up.
“Yuta?”
“Hm?”
“You’re making me better, too. So thanks for that.”
He smiles and reaches for the remote. “I’m glad.” He presses play, gaze shifting from you back to the screen. But very quietly, so much so that you almost convince yourself you didn’t hear it, he says, “You make me better, too.”
—
The summer goes on, heat blazing and muscles burning, and you train and train and train. More and more of your teammates filter onto campus, returning from various summer trips or training camps, and sometimes you and Yuta play with them or against them, pairing up and splitting off and running drills until his presence feels almost normal. Just another Olympian in your midst, yelling in the early-morning fog.
At some point, it starts to feel as if he’s one of you. He’s the same age as Maki and Hakari and Kirara, and he just falls right into step. It helps that he’s already familiar with Gojo, and apparently Shoko too.
When he’s around, he’s in Gojo’s office or at the courts or in the gym or even leeching off your summer meal plan and eating in the campus dining center. And then he’ll be gone again, and you’ll follow his progress online—well, Nobara will—and you’re reminded all over again that he is in a class all his own.
You can feel yourself getting better. Your weakest spot, that fated area between the baseline and the service line, becomes a more familiar territory. Yuta’s aces are less and less frequent, his absolutely brutal serve finding your racket more and more.
You’re still hopelessly outmatched, but the progress is worth it.
When he flies out for Wimbledon at the end of June, you’re up at the ass crack of dawn to drive him to the airport. Megumi gives you some weird look you can’t parse when you explain why you need to go to bed early the night before, but you gave up trying to understand the intricacies of Megumi’s facial expressions ages ago. That’s Yuji’s job.
Then you watch, all of you, on Yuji and Megumi’s TV as Yuta sweeps the whole thing.
“I can’t believe this guy is training you,” Yuji marvels, not an ounce of jealousy in his voice, only that familiar joy.
“Yeah.” Your laugh is more of a disbelieving breath as you sink back into the couch cushions, sprawling your legs across Nobara’s without tearing your gaze from the screen. “Yeah, neither can I.”
It’s only after Wimbledon, when you’re watching doubles after all the singles matches wrap up, that you remember what Yuta said about his partner. Inumaki.
“Hey, chronically online love of my life?”
“Hm?” Nobara sits up from her place sprawled across the couch, head on Yuji’s lap.
“Can you look up the name Inumaki for me? Inumaki tennis. Or just like, Inumaki Olympics. Yuta mentioned his doubles partner and I was gonna look into it.”
“And you aren’t capable of typing two words into a search engine yourself?” Megumi drawls. You point to your phone, on the uneven coffee table in the center of the room.
“Dude, it’s so far away.”
Megumi just rolls his eyes.
Nobara’s usually quick to report, but her brows are furrowed as she scrolls, swiping in and out of tabs and making confused noises to herself. You watch about ten different emotions play across her face in the span of two seconds. “What?”
“Toge Inumaki,” she says, looking up from her phone to meet your gaze. “Accomplished doubles and singles player. Played with Yuta.”
That’s what you expected. So why is Nobara looking at you like that?
“But…?” you prompt, frowning as the match on screen wraps up and Yuji silently fist pumps because the girls he was rooting for won.
“But,” Nobara says, “he was never in the Olympics.”
“What?”
You know for a fact that Yuta played doubles in the 2020 Olympics. He split off and started playing singles after that. He… this doesn’t make sense.
“He and Yuta weren’t partners in the Olympics,” she repeats. “They just did some pro circuits together, but not for that long. It looks like they went to high school together, probably played doubles there and tried to go pro before they split... Actually, it’s not saying Yuta did men’s doubles at the Olympics at all?”
“No,” you murmur aloud. “But he did, I—what?” You talked about this with him. He didn’t switch to singles until the 2024 Olympics.
Would he lie to you?
Even Megumi’s brows are knitted, and he’s leaning toward Nobara, curious. Yuji is evidently just very confused, but he doesn’t seem too bothered about it.
“Oh, found it,” Nobara says, sitting up completely now. “Wait, guys, he did do doubles.” She cocks her head. “Mixed doubles. Someone girl named Rika Orimoto. She’s got a page, too, let me…”
Nobara is leaning forward now, elbows on her knees, curtain of hair blocking off her face as she reads. Then her thumb goes still over the screen, and she looks up like the breath has been knocked out of her.
It’s not often you see Nobara Kugisaki at a loss for words. You can count the times on one hand. There was first time Maki said I love you, which you learned from Maki after the fact. And the time she walked in on Gojo and Geto making out in his office, which might be a stretch because her dead silence did very quickly give way to shrieking about how you owed her money. Also, the entire second half of Mockingjay, when she was too busy crying over Finnick to say anything.
And now.
“Okay,” Megumi prompts, losing patience. “What about Rika?”
Nobara swallows, placing her phone face-down beside her on the couch.
summary: you thought you'd gotten rid of arrogant NBA star satoru gojo when he left the curses after your first year in basketball management. but when your contract is up three years later, you find yourself working with him once again as the manager for the sorcerers. as you navigate playoff season alongside long-time friend ieiri shoko and the sorcerers' insufferable star player, you start to realize his sudden departure from the curses may not have been what it seemed, and maybe gojo isn't exactly the person (or player) you thought he was, either.
warnings: language, definitely not accurate in terms of the structure of professional basketball management but it's fine, the ACTUAL last part this time, grossly cute, shenanigans, toge talks, the return of uncle sukuna
|| sfw. 3.7k words.
"YOU KNOW, YOU'RE not fooling anyone," Tsumiki says, raising a brow at your jersey with an amused glint in her eyes.
“No?” You spin around to show it off, and Kento gives you a little two-fingered salute from across the roof, where he’s mid-conversation with Ieiri. The jersey’s not even yours, but you hadn’t even finished saying I wanna mess with Satoru before Kento handed it over without question. Satoru hasn’t shut up about it all night, the fact that your jersey has NANAMI printed in big, blocky letters across the back.
“She’s fooling me,” he whines, tugging at the fabric of your shirt. You can’t help the smirk that spreads across your lips. But you lean into him, pressing your cheek into his shoulder, and his indignation turns into a lazy grin.
The open space exposes you to the perfect summer air, a faint breeze blowing in off the coast, and you stand at the edge of the roof deck with its string lights and music and feel warm as you watch all your boys mill around, laughing and rough-housing and taking awful .5 selfies. The stadium’s VIP level is all yours tonight, the rest of the facility dark and empty beneath you, the lights and sound from the city below floating up to rest along the railings.
Megumi wanders up to the three of you, Yuji in tow. “Nice shirt.” Satoru leans over with an arm out, and you grab his wrist right before he can flick Megumi square in the forehead.
“It’s my new favorite,” you tell him, louder than you need to. “Don’t think I’m ever gonna take it off—”
You’re cut off with a yelp as Satoru effortlessly swings you around and over his shoulder, whistling casually as he starts to walk in circles around Yuji and the Fushiguros.
“Toru!” you shout, pounding on his back with no real strength behind it. You could probably just knee him in the stomach if you really wanted to get down, but your heart’s light in your chest as you force down your laughter, pretending instead to be enraged. “Put me down.”
He hums, striking up a conversation with Yuji instead. “You hear something? Huh.”
Tsumiki catches your eye as she moves to the other side of Satoru, out of view, and wiggles her fingers in front of her, mouthing something. It takes you a second to figure out what she’s telling you to do, and then a grin breaks across your face.
You start tickling him.
“Oh my god—hey!” He spins around and plants you on your feet as you look up at him innocently, clasping your hands primly in front of you and shrugging.
“Menace,” he says fondly, and just slings an arm around your shoulder, pulling you into his side like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And maybe it is.
It’s been a week on the dot since the Sorcerers took home the title, and what a week it’s been. Riko landed yesterday to get acquainted with the team, and right now she’s sandwiched between Ino and Toge, waving her arms around animatedly while she rambles. They’re hanging onto her every word, and you know she’s gonna be good for this team. You know it with the same certainty you always predict the playoff seeds, and the way you know what Nobara’s about to say as she strolls over with a champagne glass in each hand and her nose wrinkled ever so slightly.
And right on cue: “You’re disgustingly cute,” she says, handing you one of the glasses as you disentangle yourself from Satoru.
“I know I am,” you say, just to hear his indignant protest. Whatever snarky reply he has in queue is cut off as Yaga’s booming voice carries across the roof, and you turn to face the source of the sound on instinct.
Yaga has always had the kind of commanding presence that doesn’t require a lot of noise. He’s fairly stoic, though everyone who’s spent more than five minutes with him knows he’s pretty soft, and he when he does speak, people listen.
“I’m not one for speeches,” he says, to which Toge immediately starts chanting, “Speech! Speech! Speech!”
Okay, most people listen.
Yaga was clearly going somewhere with this, but now he clears his throat and stares Toge down in a way that makes him freeze mid-fist pump.
“But,” Yaga says, “since Inumaki is clearly intimately familiar with the importance of vocalizing your feelings, I suppose I’ll leave it to him to wrap up the season.” Toge briefly looks like he’s considering jumping off the roof, but Yuta smirks and nudges him forward. He shrugs and apparently decides to embrace it, swaggering up to Yaga and standing on the doorstep to the rooftop entrance like it’s a stage.
Toge is one of the most chaotic people you know, but he does it in kind of a quiet way. He honestly doesn’t talk a lot, especially compared to some people on this team. And you have no idea how this is going to go.
He clears his throat dramatically and waves a hand, saying, “Thank you, thank you, you’re too kind.” Hakari boos, and it only eggs Toge on more.
“Ladies and gentleman of the best team in the world,” he proclaims, flourishing his arms so aggressively he nearly falls right off the step. If you didn’t know Toge, you’d probably assume he was tipsy. “We began this humble season with nothing but a new draft pick and a dream. And not the poetic kind. The kind of weird almost-fever-dream that makes you wonder what it would be like to take LSD, probably.”
“God, here we go,” Nobara snorts, and you realize she’s already been recording. You have literally never heard Toge speak this many consecutive words, and you’re kind of speechless.
“I like to think of myself as an optimist,” Toge says, and you can hear Yuta laugh, “but did I think we were gonna kick San Diego’s ass this year? Not really. But, there were a few things I failed to consider. Number one!”
He points at Junpei, who goes bright red where he’s now standing by Riko, and Ino leans over to ruffle his hair. “Mister Fresh-Outta-College over here. Nobody’s underestimating you after that performance.” Satoru lets out a whoop that has the whole rooftop exploding in cheers, and Junpei looks so sheepish—you don’t see humble like that in pro sports very often. He’s a sweetheart. You hope he gets to stay this way.
“Number two!” Toge yells when the commotion has died down, and he points—directly at you? You glance back to make sure, but the only person behind you is Tsumiki, who’s grinning at you and looking proud.
Satoru nudges you with his elbow and beams, and now you’re the one going red as Toge continues, “Our manager, who—in her first season with us—herded us all to championships and saved our asses in more ways than I can count. And I can count, like, pretty high, because I majored in business in college so I wouldn’t have to do anything.”
“This is the most cursed speech I’ve ever heard,” Ieiri snorts.
Nobara’s got the camera on you now, and you try not to look too embarrassed, but everyone’s eyes are on you. “She’s the only reason any of us ever got on a plane to anywhere,” Toge says. “Popcorn, Yuta.”
Yuta just stares at him blankly for a second before he realizes what his idiotic best friend is doing, and then he turns to you and smiles. “She’s the only reason any of us have sponsorship deals,” he says. “Ino?”
“She’s the only one who laughs at my jokes!” he calls, and you do laugh. You can’t help it. You feel so incredibly warm all over as every guy on the team thanks you for something, from things that are literally just your job to stuff as personal as looking out for their families in the stands or remembering birthdays or planning this end-of-season celebration.
Yaga jumps in with a pointed glance at Riko and says, “Making sure this team stayed in good hands even as she moves on to bigger and better things.”
“Getting shit done,” Kusakabe says bluntly. “And making sure the lot of you assholes do, too.”
“Keeping that dumbass in check,” Megumi huffs, looking pointedly at Satoru.
Finally the only one left is Satoru, who glances down at you with so much affection in his gaze you almost have to look away.
“She makes me a better player,” he says, “but she makes me a better person, too.” He looks out across the roof, at all his teammates and their friends and families gathered with wind-flushed cheeks and tipsy smiles. “She makes all of us better.”
“If you kiss right now, I’m jumping,” Megumi says, and Tsumiki swats him on the shoulder. Satoru grins at him like the little shit he is, and then he’s grabbing you by your jersey and pulling you into a bruising kiss. It’s exaggerated and obnoxious, all for show, and you can’t help smiling against his lips, laughing as you pull away and Toge picks up his insane speech, thanking Nobara and Shoko and the coaches and Kento.
“He’s gonna say number seven is the power of friendship,” Megumi says flatly.
Yuji grins. “How do you know there’s a number seven?”
“NUMBER SEVEN!” Toge hollers. “The power of—”
The door abruptly opens behind him, nearly knocking him off the step.
The man who steps through the door has a Sorcerers jersey on, a beer in his hand, and familiar, unnerving eyes that are only made more pronounced by the tattoos printed across his face. Yuji’s head drops onto Megumi’s shoulder.
“SORCERERS IN SEVEN!” Sukuna hollers, brandishing the beer in the air. Sorcerers in seven. It’s… true, but also the maximum number of games you can have in a series, so… not really the most marketable campaign slogan?
For a long moment, it’s quiet.
And then the rooftop erupts all over again.
“Fuck it,” Toge calls, jumping off the step. “Let’s party!”
Someone hung one of those kids’ basketball hoops over the door, and a miniature ball is being thrown around as the guys try to make trick shots from ridiculous places on the roof. Hakari pulls Satoru away and blindfolds him in an attempt to recreate the series-winning shot, and it’s not going well so far. You walk over to Riko as the party goes on around you, the chatter punctuated by Sukuna’s booming voice (I HAD NO DOUBTS, NEPHEW, EXCEPT FOR THAT ONE TIME I HAD DOUBTS) and the little barks of Shiro and Kuro as they dart between peoples’ legs, chasing the ball.
Riko beams up at you when you come to stand next to her at one of the high-top tables. “I like these guys,” she says, watching the chaos unfold. “Thank you for this. I mean it.”
When you called, she was managing a semi-pro women’s league out in the northwest. She liked it, but it wasn’t the level of go-go-go she wanted. She’s always had a lot of energy.
“You're the best one for the job,” you say honestly, and she grins.
You’ll fly up to Manhattan in the morning to sign some paperwork at the WNBA headquarters, get a tour of the place, lay out your responsibilities for the upcoming season. The prospect of managing all those teams, seeing the season play out with some of the most kickass women you’ve ever met on the court—it fills you up with a sort of anticipatory hunger you haven’t felt since you played in college. It feels like it was always going to end up like this, somehow.
The WNBA hasn’t officially announced you yet, so for now you’re avoiding most of the media attention, but you know it’ll show up the second you walk out of headquarters. You’re more excited about the inevitable call from Kasumi, screaming about how she’ll get to see you more. Even though she's in the Western Conference, your role will put you in proximity pretty often.
And when you come home, it’ll be to this. A team that still loves you, with a bright-eyed new manager who you’ve assured can call you for anything and everything. To Satoru, and Megumi and Yuji and Tsumiki and the dogs. Dinner at his apartment or yours, falling asleep in a tangle of warm limbs. Home.
“You think they’re gonna win it all again?” Riko asks. You watch as Yuta jumps on Toge’s back, as if he can’t dunk in the tiny plastic hoop without the added height. As Megumi’s hand slips quietly into Yuji’s, and Sukuna—miraculously—just pats him unnecessarily hard on the shoulder with an approving nod. As Yaga and Kusakabe talk to Nobara by the railing, listening to her excitedly lay out her campaign ideas for next year.
As Satoru finally nails the shot and victoriously pulls the blindfold off, immediately scanning the surroundings for you and grinning that infectious smile.
“Yeah,” you say, smiling back. “Yeah, I do.”
—
[Transcript of a preseason interview with the Sorcerers’ Satoru Gojo, outside the training complex. He tugs his headband down around his neck, letting his hair fall in a mess around his eyes, and nods as he listens to a local reporter.]
JJ SPORTS JOURNAL: …hear the transition to Amanai’s leadership has gone smoothly. Are you and the team feeling good about the upcoming opening series under new management, right after such an effective run last season?
SATORU GOJO: Oh, yeah, Riko’s great. I mean… [smiles, chuckles] it’s hard to live up to our Alley-Oop, yeah, but she knew what she was doing when she recommended our new girl. She’s like, the most efficient little ball of energy ever. But the two of them, it’s like comparing apples to oranges—no, actually, that’s a stupid expression. Like, basketballs to baseballs, y’know?
JOURNAL: Uh… sure, yeah.
FOX SPORTS ONE: Gojo, what are your thoughts on the Kamo transfer? How is he fitting into the lineup so far?
GOJO: Oh, it’s like Choso's always been here. Itadori’s his half-brother, so he’s always had the connection here, and he was always a good opponent on the court. I think he’s really gonna add something to the attack. You can never have too much depth up there. I think he’s excited to get back to Savannah and play the Samurai. Nothing quite like going up against old teammates, I guess.
FS1: Speaking of old teammates, it sounds like you recently made the trip out to San Diego to see the Curses’ Suguru Geto. Seems to be a friendly rivalry. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve known him since high school. Having beaten him in the title series last season and knowing what both sides look like compositionally approaching the opener, knowing they’ve got some big trades on the horizon—would your approach to taking on the Curses change?
GOJO: Suguru’s a good player. He always has been. And we’ve been on paths since high school that took us different places, brought us back together again, y’know—lot of different trajectories. Feels like we’re growing at the same rate, a lot of the time. He’ll always be a threat on the court. But so will I. I think it’s just a matter of putting your best foot forward every time.
JOURNAL: The real question is, could he beat you in a game of pick-up basketball right now? [laughter]
[Gojo smirks, pushing his headband back up and glancing at someone out of frame, then shakes his head and chuckles.]
GOJO: Nah, I’d win.
MEGUMI FUSHIGURO: [from off-camera] Cocky!
[Gojo grins and sprints out of frame. Moments later, Fushiguro shouts in protest as Gojo laughs maniacally.]
FS1: Well, guess that’s that.
JOURNAL: Is someone filming this right now? This is hilarious—
[The camera shakes and pans to Gojo chasing Fushiguro around the parking lot. Yuji Itadori walks out of the training center and stares uncomprehendingly at the two of them before shrugging, dropping his bag, and joining Gojo in the chase.]
—
[Transcript of a press conference with the WNBA commissioner, conference coordinators, and a handful of head coaches, one month into the season. You sit to the right of Yuki Tsukumo, Mai Zenin on the opposite side.]
ESPN: Question for any and all of you present—well, I’ll maybe leave the coaches out of this one. Who are the top contenders for the title this season based solely off what you’ve seen so far?
MAI ZENIN: In the West, I think people should be real worried about the Shadows. Kasumi Miwa’s on fire these days; she’s leading the league in three-pointers right now, I believe. I’d watch out for the Wildfire, too. Nobody should be taking Momo Nishimiya lightly.
YOU: Yeah, I think the Shadows have always been a threat, but they’re particularly strong this year. From the Eastern Conference, I’d say the Captains are going strong. The Unity, too. When you’ve got players like Kirara Hoshi, Hana Kurusu… yeah, there’s a lot of contenders this year.
THE ATHLETIC: Ms. Tsukumo, we understand there was an unexpectedly quick turnaround on the Eastern Conference Coordinator role. What was the process of filling that position like? And Ms. Zenin—were you worried you were going to have to pick up that slack, fill in for both conferences if the vacancy wasn’t filled right away?
YUKI TSUKUMO: Oh, yeah, we knew we needed to get somewhere in here fast. Someone who already knew the ropes, could pick up where we left off, y’know? I thought of this girl immediately. [Tsukumo grins, gesturing to you.] You don’t see a lot of female management in the NBA, let alone with a track record like hers, and it was a no-brainer. I still can’t believe we got her on such short notice. She’s already been phenomenal—easiest decision I’ve ever made.
[Zenin plants an elbow on the table, leaning forward to speak into the mic.]
ZENIN: Yeah, I figured it was gonna be a rough go of it for me, that I’d probably have to take on West and East for a while until we could figure something out. But I literally didn’t have to do any extra legwork on my end. She stepped right up like she’s always been here. Made my life a lot easier. We’re lucky to have her.
[You smile sheepishly, waving Zenin off.]
THE WASHINGTON POST: Ma’am, how did you choose between this position and your prior management role, coming off such a successful season with the Sorcerers? And were you worried about leaving them high and dry, having done so much for the organization in such a short time? Plus, handling a star player like Satoru Gojo, that can’t be the most simple job in the world… [laughter]
[You smile, waiting for the crowd’s laughter to fizzle out before leaning forward to speak into the mic.]
YOU: Well, they’re in good hands. I wasn’t going to leave without knowing they were taken care of, and I couldn’t have picked a better successor than Riko. The guys love her already. She’s no-nonsense, but a lot of fun; that’s the hardest balance to strike in a role like that, and it comes so naturally to her. The team was very supportive of my career advancement, obviously—I’m sure you saw all of them show up to the WNBA Opener, which I honestly can’t be thankful enough for. I didn’t know they were going to do that. But yeah, I knew it was a good move for me. In terms of Satoru Gojo? [smirks] I have no doubts about his talent, but more importantly, I’ve seen the way that team works together. And Riko can take him down a peg if she needs to. I’ve already seen it happen.
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED WOMEN: One more before you go, and I apologize that it’s about the NBA—obviously you’re not as involved in the Sorcerers’ play as you were last season, but presumably your relationship with Satoru Gojo lends you some insight into the way they’re operating over the offseason. Having that sort of front row seat, do you think they’ve got a chance at doubling that title run this season?
[You pause, glancing at Tsukumo.]
YOU: I’m not a betting girl.
[Tsukumo laughs, a few cameras flashing as she nudges you with a shoulder and rolls her eyes.]
YOU: But if I was? [smiles] My money would be on the Sorcerers.
—
[Transcript of the tail end of a GQ interview with you and Satoru Gojo. It’s July and the NBA is in its offseason, with the WNBA on All-Star break. You and Gojo sit on director’s chairs beside one another in a studio, the interviewer off-screen.]
GQ: The two of you have taken the internet by storm. People are obsessed with your love story.
YOU: Honestly, I blame Nobara for that. Did you see she posted a fan edit of us on the actual Sorcerers TikTok page?
SATORU GOJO: She knows what the people want!
YOU: It’s you. You’re people.
GOJO: I understand the concept of demand—
YOU: You reposted it!
GOJO: Okay, well, we’re adorable.
[Gojo shrugs unapologetically and gestures for the interviewer to go on, chuckling.]
GQ: What has it been like navigating your relationship as both of you are traveling for work, for leagues that operate on wholly opposing schedules?
YOU: It actually makes it easier than it would if I was with a different NBA team or something like that. Y’know, his off season is my season, vice versa. And we both obviously have responsibilities during our respective off seasons too, but we both still live in the same city, so it’s not that much of a stretch. I do a kind of work I can do from a lot of different places, too, so there’s a flexibility there.
GOJO: Honestly, I’d go wherever she went, if she let me.
[You laugh and elbow him.]
GOJO: But for real, she’s always welcome at training and wherever we’re at. Once you’re part of the team, you’re on it forever, y’know? Sometimes the travel overlaps, and that’s always fun. But we’re making it work. Both doing our dream jobs. I don’t think a lot of people get to say that, so…
GQ: That’s great. Well, that’s all from me—I won’t take too much of your time. Thanks for being here.
YOU: Yeah, thanks for having us. We do need to get going, though— [grins]. We’ve got a wedding to get to.
[The interviewer gasps, and you burst out laughing.]
YOU: No, no—
GOJO: Not ours. [He smirks, looking at you as you laugh. His voice gets a little softer, and you clearly don’t hear him as he says something under his breath.] Not yet, anyway.
a/n: surprise! i've been thinking about this epilogue for months and just haven't gotten around to writing it, but i figured with the actual NBA playoffs it'd be timely. i truly didn't know shit about the NBA/the playoffs before i started writing this fic and the other day i had a conversation with my dad about them and he was so shocked that i knew what i was talking about, and i was like "how do i tell him the reason i understand this" LMAO
fun fact: i actually wrote this fic as a gift for my friend's birthday, and the whole focus of the tournament was different because it was centered around an in-state rivalry and then i decided to get tumblr and post it and changed the whole thing so everyone say THANKS GRETA
guys conference coordinator is NOT a real thing. i very much made this up and this isn't really how managers work but just. ignore the inaccuracies for the sake of the plot pls
also they’re going to miwa & muta’s wedding if that wasn’t clear! hope you enjoyed the chaos of NBA!gojo. this is done for real now:)
🎸 out of my mind ! 💿 track five: the battle of the bands
guitarist!ino x drummer!reader
summary: it's the annual battle of the bands at the fix, your college campus's iconic live music bar, and this year you're taking the stage as the drummer for indie rock group cursed technique. you know the competition is strong, but no part of you is ready for lead singer and guitarist takuma ino. you lock eyes at the edge of the stage, and something starts—something that might make you feel alive even more than the beat of the drums.
warnings: language, alcohol, DOGGOS, yuji literally is just a ray of sunshine 24/7, mentions of drunk driving, so much fluff, ridiculous amount of kissing tbh, short time skip at the end, FINAL CHAPTER!
|| sfw. 8.8k words.
FOR THE FIRST time in a long stretch of busy days, you wake up not to the chirp of your alarm but to soft rays of Saturday morning sunlight seeping through the cracks in the blinds, painting your eyelids orange-gold. You crack an eye open and find Takuma stirring beside you. Right.
“Morning,” you whisper. For a moment, when Takuma opens his eyes, he looks surprised, and then he seems to remember why and how you got here and his expression melts into a soft smile.
“Morning, Skip.” He yawns. “Time’s it?”
You shrug. You’re pretty sure your phone is dead.
“Eh, it’s Saturday,” he mumbles. “S’fine.” You chuckle, daring to reach out and ruffle his hair. You don’t know what this is, the unspoken thing in the thin slice of air between you. You know what you want it to be, though.
For a while you both lie in comfortable silence, letting the sounds of the awakening house float up the stairs toward you. Murmuring, clattering around in the kitchen, the front door opening and closing, cars outside.
“Hey,” you say eventually, making eye contact. His eyes are a very deep shade of brown, dark but warm in a way that reminds you of old bookshelves or tree bark after the rain.
“Hey back.”
He’s relaxed, every part of him unhurried, and you take the image of it and stamp it into your mind over the memory of the night prior. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Takuma smiles. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Maybe it should be more awkward, the fact that you’re here in his bed in his clothes and you haven’t named whatever it is that stretches out in the silence. But it’s not. It’s just… easy.
“Skipper?”
“Hm?”
“I really, really like you,” Takuma whispers. The words wrap themselves around you, warm when you didn’t know you were cold.
“Yeah?” You bring a hand up to his face, trace the line of his jaw. His cheeks are a little colored in the mix of light slipping through the window and the cracked door. “I really, really like you too, Takuma.”
He cups your face in both hands, pulls your lips to his, and your whole body responds, pressing up against him in the too-small twin bed. Your hand goes to hold the back of his neck, deepening the kiss, and this is what people write love songs about, you fucking get it now, all the metaphors and cliché words you thought were exaggerations but no, they’re not, because you’re feeling all of them all at once and you don’t ever want to leave this moment in time.
“Like” doesn’t feel strong enough, not for this. You’ve only known him for a month. Is it really possible he’s already become so integral to the structure of your heart?
You’re kissing in the early morning light and it’s hungrier than you thought your next kiss would be, because even though all the rest of your days are rolling out before you, you don’t know how many there are. He twists so he’s above you on his knees, one of them between your legs, and it’s like a reversal of that night on the roof, like you can feel the night air even in the golden midmorning hours.
“Kuma,” you murmur between kisses, and he grins against your mouth, takes your next breath and makes it his.
At some point you’re interrupted by the startled growl of your stomach, and you break apart, unable to stifle the giggles rising up in your throat. “Well.”
“Well,” Takuma echoes, grinning. He stands and offers you a hand. “Breakfast?”
Downstairs, the house is alive with idle chatter and the clinking of silverware. Kirara is seated atop the counter, legs swinging as she eats a plate of eggs, and Hakari stands beside her leaning against the cabinets. Megumi scrolls absently through his phone at the table, the dogs looking up at him expectantly from either side, and Yuji is digging through a bunch of take-out boxes. When he sees you, his whole face lights up.
“Morning!” he practically sings. “Here, eat food.”
“Where’d this come from?” Takuma asks.
“My friend dropped off breakfast,” Yuji chirps, pushing a Tupperware container of pancakes toward you. If it weren’t for the brace wrapped around his wrist, you’d have no idea anything happened. He’s his usual golden retriever self.
You smile, forking one of the pancakes onto a plate. “That’s sweet.”
Your phone buzzes, and it’s Tsumiki sending you the link to the news brief. You frown at the headline, not out of any disrespect for the writer who stepped up to cover it, but more at the fact that it’s unfortunately true.
JU senior issued DUI after crash on 34th and Olson Blvd Friday night
“What’s up?” Takuma asks, immediately noting your expression. You slide the phone across the counter, watching its screen catch the light from the kitchen window. Kirara leans over it as well and starts reading off Junpei’s story halfway through.
“Zenin, who according to a campus police report was driving under the influence of alcohol, was on the phone with an ex-girlfriend when he swerved into the opposite lane.” Her dark brows knit together in some combination of anger and disbelief. “Jesus.”
“That’s fucked,” you murmur.
Someone’s phone rings, and Megumi glances at his screen and blinks, seems to hesitate. Then he gets up and disappears down the hall. You glance at Takuma, but he just shrugs. It’s probably Gojo.
The rest of you eat and eventually make your way to the living room, scattering yourselves across the couch and carpet and chairs.
“That single last night,” Takuma says, letting Kuro jump up beside him on the couch. “Concept. Make it the title track of an EP.”
You blink for a second, startled. “Wait, for real?”
“Yes!” Takuma says, sitting up straighter. “Think about it. Cover art is one of those name tag stickers, you all sign it, wrinkle it up and crease it and take a grainy film photo. And you put the song on it with Next Fix and a couple of your older singles you and blow up.”
“Or you print one off that says hello, our name is,” Kirara pipes up, seeming excited by the idea. “Ooh, you can have an intro track like that.”
“All caps. Just to match the energy,” you say, picturing the EP cover in your mind. “HELLO MY NAME IS. No punctuation either.”
“I like it,” Kirara nods. Takuma’s got that excited shine to his eyes, and you realize he’s very in his element in this conceptual space—he really will be a good producer. He has the mind for it.
Megumi slips back into the room looking a little haphazard, disgruntled, looking anywhere but into anyone else’s eyes, and Yuji cocks his head in question. Not Gojo, then. “Who was that?”
“No one,” Megumi lies, waving him off and turning back toward the kitchen to avoid everyone’s questioning gaze. Hm.You know better than to ask, and it seems that’s the consensus, because nobody pushes it—Megumi will open up in his own time. You hope he figures it out soon.
For your part, it’s a lazy Saturday, hanging out with Takuma, Yuji, Megumi, Kirara, and Hakari, gaming and talking and generally just existing in each other’s presence. After the chaos of last night, it seems to be exactly what all of you needed.
It’s not until late afternoon that Kirara broaches the topic of the band.
She gestures at Yuji, a flapping motion that misses the mark a little because Kirara is sprawled upside-down in the beanbag in the corner. “Itadori, can you, like… drum with that?”
He shrugs, looking down at his injured wrist. “Yeah, probably!” You frown. So much of drumming is in the wrist, and you kind of figured Kirara’s question was rhetorical. You realize abruptly that Shibuya Incident is still going up against Black Flash in the finals on Friday, and if they don’t have Yuji, they’re fucked.
“Psh, don’t look like that, it’s fine,” Yuji insists, grabbing two Wii remotes and wielding them like drumsticks. He goes to bang them around, mimicking a rock beat, and you watch as his face twists into a grimace and he drops one of them. “Okay, so, update: never mind!” He grins sheepishly.
Kirara is the first one to look at you, and by the time you’ve processed what exactly it is she’s trying to say, everyone else has their eyes locked on you—including Yuji.
Oh, shit.
“Whaddaya say, girl drummer?” Kirara asks, pointing a finger gun at you.
“Oh, guys, I don’t… I don’t know, it’s your band. Yuji—”
But Yuji is the one who seems the most excited about it. He’s abandoned both Wii remotes on the floor and is now looking up at you with bright eyes and his eternal grin. “No, Skipper, please? It would be so fun! I can still do aux and stuff. But we could play together! It would be so awesome!”
“Is that even allowed?” you ask, glancing at Takuma, who’s trying and failing to hide a boyishly excited smile. “I mean, I already got eliminated.”
“Hang on,” Hakari says, pulling out his phone. It takes you a minute to realize who he’s asking. “Yeah, no, Panda says it’s whatever. Better that than not have a battle at all.”
Takuma nudges you with a knee, looking at you with steady eyes. It’s your choice, he seems to say.
“I think,” you say slowly, “I should talk to my band first. But… I’m not opposed.”
Yuji whoops so loudly you flinch a little and Takuma grins, putting his arm around you and squeezing your shoulder.
“I probably should head out,” you say, a little reluctantly. “Kinda left the roommates high and dry last night.”
Kirara salutes you, her face red from the blood rush of still being upside down, and Yuji chirps out a happy see ya!
“I’ll walk you out,” Takuma says, standing when you do. You say bye to the band and the dogs and he follows you to the front door, going as far as to step just outside with you. The door stays open just a crack as you linger, his hand coming to rest on the small of your back. He pulls you in and kisses you right there on the front step, and you smile against his lips.
“Are we, like…?” Takuma murmurs when he pulls away, cheeks flushed from the question or the cold, you can’t tell.
“Are we what?” you tease, shoving lightly at his chest.
“You know.”
“Well, if you don’t say it I’m gonna beat you to asking—”
This seems to zap whatever hesitation Takuma had right out of him, and he cuts in, “Willyoubemygirlfriend?”
“Sorry, what was that?” You know you’ve got a shit-eating grin on your face, but you can’t stop it. “Couldn’t really hear you—”
“Oh my god. Will,” he says slowly, drawing out the word, “You. Be. My. Girlfriend?”
You can see your laugh fanning out before you in a puff of warm air, and you tip your head forward into his chest, grinning. “Yes, Takuma, I would love to be your girlfriend.” You pull back and look up at him, lacing your fingers together. “I was kind of trying to get you alone all week so we could figure out what the fuck was going on. But it worked out, huh?”
“Yeah,” he grins. “It worked out.” He reaches up and ruffles your hair, laughing when you go to swat his hand away. “I was trying to get you alone, too,” he admits. “I like spending time with you, Skip. I’m pretty sure you’re the coolest person I’ve met, like, ever.”
“Ever,” you echo. “Those are some pretty lofty expectations to live up to.”
He shrugs. “You meet them all.”
Despite yourself, heat creeps up to your cheeks again.
“That was less scary than I thought it was gonna be,” Takuma confesses. Your phone rings in your pocket, and you glance at it and see Maki’s name sliding across the screen.
“Think that’s my cue.” You plant one last kiss on Takuma’s lips and turn around, throwing a “bye, boyfriend” over your shoulder. You glance back and catch him mid fist-pump, and he sheepishly shoves his hands into his pockets when he realizes you saw.
You’re still wearing his clothes, you realize as you answer your phone. Guess it doesn’t really matter, since they’re your boyfriend’s.
“Hey,” Maki says in your ear. “You comin’ home anytime soon? No rush, but we’re making lunch so we figured we’d ask.” In the background, you can hear Toge singing what you think is a dramatic rendition of Kristoff’s song from Frozen II, but you aren’t entirely certain because none of the words are right.
“Yeah, I’m literally walking through the door in thirty seconds,” you say, and Nobara’s face appears in the kitchen window. She waves excitedly and you raise a hand in return.
“Oh, sick.” The line goes dead as you open the front door. “Hey!” Maki shouts when she hears it click, and you slam it closed against the rush of cool air trying to sneak inside with you.
“Hi!” you call back.
Yuta pokes his head around the corner and grins at you. “Welcome home, our favorite breaking news reporter.”
“I didn’t actually report on anything,” you admit, kicking your shoes off and padding into the kitchen. Toge is somehow balancing cross-legged on one of the high stools, and Maki is making tacos. “Conflict of interest once I realized who it was.”
“Yeah, I saw the article,” Nobara chimes in, glancing up from her phone. “Yikes. Frickin’ Naoya Zenin. What an asshat.”
You snort. What an understatement.
“Hope he rots in jail,” Maki says in a sing-song voice, not even looking up.
“I love family,” Toge says.
You fill your friends in on the crash and the aftermath and Yuji’s wrist, leaving out some of the details about Takuma, because that feels a little invasive. And then Yuta asks the big question: “What about the band?”
“About that,” you say, taking a deep breath. You’re not exactly sure why this makes you so nervous. Maybe it’s just that these are your people, your band, and you all worked so hard and then went down together. It doesn’t seem fair that you get to go back on stage and try again and the rest of them don’t. “So. They asked me to fill in—“
“Yes!” Nobara shouts, pumping a fist in the air. “Oh, that’s so awesome!”
“Well, I didn’t say yes yet—”
“What? Why?” Toge asks incredulously. You laugh, feeling the weight lift off your shoulders. Of course they’re okay with it. These are your best friends. They’ll always have your back.
“I wanted to check with you guys,” you say, feeling silly about it now. “Just—I don’t know, to make sure. Since it’s not our band, and I didn’t want you guys to feel like I was, I don’t know, like…”
“Musically cheating?” Maki chuckles. “Skipper, this is great. You should say yes.”
Yuta solemnly puts a hand over his heart. “Avenge us.”
“Thanks, guys.” You grin as you hop up on the counter next to Nobara, pressing your shoulder to hers. “I love y’all.”
“Sap,” Maki says, which means love you too.
—
Using a drum set that isn’t yours is always a weird experience. You feel like everything is just ever so slightly off, and Yuji’s kit is an absolute patchwork of different brands of heads and shells and cymbals. You have to lower the stool because he’s taller than you. But it’s just for rehearsal, at least—you can use your own kit at The Fix.
It’s your first time in the shabby basement of Takuma’s house, and it looks distinctly different than your own. They’ve pinned old rugs to the walls as a type of sound deadener, not dissimilar to your own setup, but their lighting is a collection of Facebook marketplace floor lamps and a little disco ball that’s apparently Yuji’s. Your basement has string lights and a bunch of stools and beanbags, and this one has extra blankets all over the floor where Yuji and Kirara have made themselves at home.
Learning Shibuya Incident’s songs isn’t difficult—you’ve heard enough of their music to anticipate what’s coming, and Yuji’s there to give you pointers. Their three-song set for the final performance isn’t actually done, because they don’t feel like they have a good enough finisher, and after you’ve run the first two songs several times you mess around with potential chorus lines.
“What about that?” Kirara says after plucking out a new melody. “It’s hype enough, I think. Or it will be, once we add the rest of you.”
“I like that.” You tap out the rhythm on the snare rim, humming. “You have lyrics?” You look at Takuma, who’s staring at the ceiling like it might have all the answers if he just squints hard enough.
“Somethin’ about, like… losing your head a little bit because you caught feels,” he says. “Like, you’re down so bad you can’t function, to be dramatic about it. That triplet at the beginning of the chorus, Kirara—”
She plucks it out again, down-up-down. “On my own,” Takuma echoes, down-up-down. “Every little move I can’t pin down…”
The words tumble past your lips before you can stop them, because they’ve been circling your head for a week now. “Friends with all the dead in my ghost town.”
He spins around to look at you, a grin spreading across his face. “Yes! It’s like I’m going…”
“Going,” Kirara echoes, and they go back and forth—going, going, “out of my mind!”
“Whoo!” Yuji cheers, pumping a fist in the air. “Holy shit. That was crazy.” Takuma grabs the nearest beat-to-hell spiral notebook and starts scribbling.
Megumi starts laying out a bassline, subtly driving the beat forward a little, and you clamp the hat down on two and four to keep time. Kirara comes in with something that must be the verse, and Takuma reads off, “You left in the morning after eight, I got into work two hours late, I can’t see the sun without your face.” Bass, bass, bass. Megumi nods along and Yuji is practically dancing from his spot on the floor.
“One day and I run fresh out of light…”
Hm. You add, “Twelve hours without your hand in mine.”
“I’m dizzy and overworked and tired,” Kirara sings lowly. All three of you sing the chorus again, and you feel just like you’re at home in your own basement, writing a song in real time with Nobara and Maki and the boys.
“Oh, that slaps,” Takuma practically shouts. “Jesus. We’re gonna win.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Megumi warns, a wry quirk to his lips.
Kirara glances at her phone. “Food’s here. Break time, freaks.” She bounds up the stairs and Megumi follows to help her grab the bags—you DoorDashed Taco Bell, since Yuji never got his beloved crunch wrap on Friday.
You leave your sticks on the snare and move around the drum set, flopping down on the ground beside Takuma. “You’re good at that,” you tell him honestly, pulling the notebook away to read what he’s writing down. I met you across the darkened stage, you shook up my life, you got me made, you’re drivin’ me crazy night and day.
You can’t help thinking of the night you met him, locking eyes while he sang from the edge of the low stage at The Fix, lit up by purple-red stage lights and putting you in a trance. You scribble a few more lines after his and hand the pen back.
“You’re a poet,” he tells you, and you laugh.
“I’m a journalist.”
“Woman of many talents,” he says, echoing Maki’s words from that first night you met.
“Itadori!” Kirara shouts down the stairs.
“Coming!” Yuji leaps up and disappears up the rickety basement staircase, leaving you and Takuma alone.
“Hey,” he says, tapping the pen on the page. You glance up at him, nodding for him to keep going. “Can I take you out? Like, on an actual date?”
Something light and quick kicks around in your chest, a hummingbird loose in your ribcage. “I would not be opposed,” you say, as if the idea doesn’t make you want to kick your feet like a little kid. “When are you thinking?”
“Mm, you’re in night class prison tomorrow,” he says, tapping the pen against his lip now. “Tuesday?”
It shouldn’t make you so irrationally happy that he remembers your schedule, but logic seems to go out the window where Takuma Ino is concerned. “Tuesday’s good. Where do you wanna go?”
He shakes his head adamantly, tapping you on the nose with his pen. “Leave it to me.”
—
The only things Takuma’s told you about your date tonight are dress warm and bring your board. He meets you outside your place at four, his bag definitely bulkier than usual, his own skateboard under one foot.
You’re wearing a denim jacket over a hoodie and your favorite cargo pants with your boots, and you tucked a beanie and gloves into your bag just in case, but it’s surprisingly balmy out for late October. The wind is the worst of it.
“Hey, pretty girl,” Takuma says when you coast down the driveway and come to a stop beside him. The greeting makes you blush as much as his smile does, and he chuckles as he pushes off. “This way.”
“Where are we going?”
“Crazy,” he says. You roll your eyes. Sounds like the kind of dad joke Yuta would make.
“Well, then.” The two of you make your way down the street and around the bend, and you realize he’s taking you to the skate park. But at the entrance he keeps going, around the pit and a few of the ramps and to the largest one, back in the corner—not the one Sukuna deals under, but the one opposite. And you stop in your tracks, your longboard making a protesting schkk under your feet, when you see it.
Battery-powered string lights loop around the posts and down the underside of the ramp, and blankets and pillows are spread out across the ground. The area is sheltered from the worst of the wind, and you know your jaw is hanging open a little as you watch Takuma unload his bag—JBL speaker, two thermoses, and a bunch of food.
“Takuma,” you say, not knowing what other words suffice. “I—oh my god.” You did not peg him as being this romantic.
Then you think about his song lyrics and think maybe you should have.
He grins at you from where he’s sat down on the blankets, holding out one of the thermoses. You leave your board by one of the poles and sit down beside him, taking it and letting the warmth seep into your hands. “What is it?”
“Hot chocolate.”
“Mm.” You scoot closer to him, staring up at the layers and layers of graffiti and marker art covering the underside of the ramp. “This is maybe the sweetest thing ever.”
“I’m glad,” he says. “I had no idea what I was doing.”
“I wouldn’t know.” You take a sip of the hot chocolate—still warm. “It’s romantic. Big fan.”
“Really?” He points to where somebody drew a dick on the far side of the ramp.
“Okay, well, you didn’t have to point it out,” you smirk. “You ever done graffiti?” Looking at his mischievous smile and the beanie tugged over his head, the skateboard abandoned a few feet away, he does look like the type.
“Tagging?” He shrugs. “No. I would, though. Maybe we should.”
You hum, staring up at the arcing bubble letters and jagged black lines all over the ramp. You think you’d be horrible at graffiti, but you’ve always appreciated it, the way it sends a message and doesn’t ask for anything in return.
“This is like… alternative aesthetic stargazing,” you muse, lifting a finger and tracing the sharp lines of one of the illegible words in the air. You could stare at all this art for hours and never find all the intricacies of it.
Takuma digs around in his bag and produces a Sharpie with an “aha!”
“You’re gonna graffiti with a Sharpie?”
He throws it at you and you catch it in one hand, instinctively twirling it like a drumstick. “We’re gonna graffiti with a Sharpie,” he corrects.
And so you do.
The nearest part of the wall is covered in bright pink paint outlined in black, and it takes you a moment of squinting and tilting your head to realize it says LEAVEYOURMARK. Seems as clear of an instruction as any. So you do—scooting forward, you start to draw flowers into the thick bands of pink lettering, and soon they’re shifting to music notes, percussion notation, aimless squiggles. Takuma queues up a laid-back playlist with a few artists you recognize and many more you don’t, and you pass the pen back and forth, adding tiny notes to messages around the ramp, doodling in the empty space.
You’ve been on dates before, but this feels wholly different. With Takuma, you’re not stressing over conversation starters, worrying about commitment, wondering if you picked the right outfit, trying to gauge your shared interests with carefully planned questions. It’s just easy, existing with him like this.
After a while, you’re on your back in the mess of pillows and blankets, staring directly up at the massive painting of a skateboard with a face. Takuma is drawing something on the wall behind you.
Squinting, the green streaks under the skateboard look like that loss meme Toge sends you at least twice a week. You take a photo with the intention of showing it to him later, though maybe you shouldn’t—he gets way too proud of himself for versing you in what he calls Reddit culture.
You crane your neck to see what Takuma’s drawing and find the thick, dark strokes of a city skyline, towers and domes and boxy apartment buildings.
“Artsy,” you tell him, smiling when he appears in your line of vision upside-down. “You sure about this computer science thing? You’re too creative.”
“That’s what my mom said,” he chuckles, capping the Sharpie and sitting down beside you. As you sit up, he leans back on his hands and glances over at you. “I told her about you. She’d love you. I mean, I’m pretty sure she already does.” He hesitates. “Is that weird? Too soon?”
“No,” you grin. “I—that’s really sweet, actually. I would love to meet your mom.” Your gaze softens at the relieved smile that crosses his face. “Gotta thank her for raising a guy like you, anyway.”
You realize you want Takuma to meet your family too—you want to show him all the corners of your too-small town, show him the place you grew up. It made you who you are—it led you here, to him, after all.
“So,” you say, tilting your head. “When you say you wanna be a producer. Where do you mean? Like, LA?”
He shrugs. “Probably. But I’m sure it’s more competitive there than anywhere else. I feel like the major hubs are there and New York, but I wouldn’t mind somewhere quieter, either.” He loops an arm around you, and your head finds its way to his shoulder. “What about you, world-class journalist?”
You grin, thinking of all the places you haven’t been, all the places you want to go. “Anywhere and everywhere. I just wanna see it all. I wanna travel.”
“You should!” He sounds genuinely excited about the concept, and you lift your head, taking in the expression on his face—he looks the way he did when he was talking about making an EP, like the world is full of possibilities and he wants to see them all play out. “You’d be so good at it. Being a travel writer or international correspondent or whatever.” He clears his throat. “I read some of your stuff, y’know.”
“What?” Suddenly you’re racking your brain for every piece you’ve published in the JU Journal, overly critical of your own work in hindsight. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s good. Really good, Skip, seriously.” He reaches out and tugs a wayward strand of hair behind your ear, and you find yourself leaning into the contact.
You aren’t sure what to say, so you settle on a soft, “Thank you.” Somehow, the idea of Takuma going out of his way to read your work feels personal on the same level that writing a song together does. Taking in your words, your ideas, internalizing them. What is intimacy if not that intellectual exchange?
“I think you’re going to be a really good producer.” It’s his turn to blush. “I mean it. Not everyone has the perspective for it, or the ear. But you do.”
“Ah, well, I—”
“Am not good at taking compliments?” you cut him off, raising a brow. “Mm, we’ll fix that.” He laughs, and you’re leaning in to kiss him like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it is the most natural thing in the world.
It’s late October, and you are not the least bit cold.
—
Your hands need to stop sweating before you lose a drumstick or something.
Shibuya Incident has about twenty minutes before you’re all due on stage for the finals, and The Fix is alive with students and lights and drinks and music and chatter. You’re out on the floor tonight, off to the side for easy access to the stage once Black Flash clears out.
“We’re kicking off with the reigning champions of the Battle of the Bands,” Panda booms, throwing an arm out as the band takes the stage. “You know ‘em, you love ‘em, they’re every genre and no genre, covers and originals, brass and wind. Give it up for Black Flash!”
You whoop just as loud as anyone else here, grinning at Nobara’s animated cheering from closer to the center of the floor. Miwa walks right up to the mic and takes it off the stand, the neck of her white electric in her other hand. “Hey, folks!” She brushes her bright blue hair out of her face and shouts, “Y’all ready to hear some good music?”
She has the sort of infectious enthusiasm that could work on pretty much anyone, and before you know it you and Kirara are spinning each other around to the beat of a synth-heavy pop song that sounds like it came straight out of the 80s. The instrumentals are simple but tight, and Miwa jumps around, engaging the crowd, belting like she doesn’t have a care in the world.
“They’re good,” you catch Megumi saying lowly, probably to Yuji, but Takuma’s the one who answers.
“If I tell you the power of friendship will lead us to victory—”
“No.”
“Well, okay, you’re no fun.”
Kirara turns around and plants a hand on her hip, looking at Megumi. “Fushiguro, we’re fine. We’re going out with a badass new single and not one but two percussionists. We’ve never sounded this good.”
“Just being the token pessimist,” he sighs, cracking a reluctant half-smile. “I know we’re good.”
Yuji elbows him playfully. “Mr. Realist.”
Black Flash segues into a second track, an ABBA cover that has you dancing without thinking, and Takuma catches your eye and grins, moving along with you. And all too soon it’s over, a third song come and gone, and Panda’s back up on stage and the five of you are hopping up over the side to make your way to your places. Hakari and another tech have already swapped out the kits, and you settle yourself in the comfort of your own throne, your own pedals, flipping on the snare and pounding the kick a few times.
Yuji’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, grinning at you. “You got this,” he mouths, shaking his tambourine at you.
You truly have no idea where he got a tambourine.
“What happened in Shibuya? Who the hell knows?” Panda shouts, riling up the crowd. “Give it up for Shibuya Incident!”
That’s your cue. You look at Kirara, who nods with a conspiratorial smile, and then Megumi, who plucks out a few notes in answer. Yuji’s already giving you a grin and a thumbs-up. And Takuma… he’s already stepped into his on-stage confidence, all relaxed, easygoing performer, and the look he gives you has energy coursing through your fingertips like an electric shock.
You hold your sticks above your head, clicking them loud on the lower end of the shaft, and shout, “One, two, three, four!”
You are alive.
The first track is another pulled from their EP, and you’ve listened to it probably an embarrassing number of times—you know Yuji’s part down to the sixteenth note, the roll, the rest, but you don’t hesitate to put your own spin on it, and he’s alight with the same energy beside you, messing around with a tambourine and a few other aux instruments near a mic of his own, since he’s also doing backup vocals tonight.
Your hands are moving fast, your feet pumping the pedals of their own accord, an instinct, and it’s over before you know it, a sheen of sweat already forming under the stage lights. You grin, catching your breath, wiping your hands on your jeans as Takuma introduces the band.
From your place near the back of the stage, you get more of the low feedback than anything else, but you definitely hear when he says Shibuya Incident and the crowd responds raucously in kind.
“That’s Kirara Hoshi on guitar and vocals,” he says, pointing to her as she does her little riff.
“Yeah, Kira!” You have no idea where Hakari’s voice is coming from, but it’s unmistakable.
“We got Fushiguro back there on the bass,” Takuma continues, and Megumi gives the crowd an unbothered nod, showing off his own instrument for a moment. “Itadori’s back here on aux and vocals.” He pauses to let the crowd shout for Yuji and then adds, “And filling in for him on kit, we’ve got the legendary drummer from Cursed Technique. Everyone give it up for Skipper!”
You do a quick roll, laughing as your own band goes crazy—you can’t see them in the glare of the lights, but you (and everyone else) can definitely hear them.
“I’m Ino, we’re Shibuya Incident, and this next one’s gonna slow things down a little.”
This one starts with Megumi, a laid-back track with a similar vibe to the first song you ever heard Shibuya Incident perform, but a little smoother. It’s over before you know it, and then you and Kirara are launching into the new single. Even Yuji looks like he’s having the time of life on backup vocals.
“On my own,” he and Kirara harmonize, Takuma taking the lead, and you nail the next two lines with punchy cymbal-tom hits, “all the shadows look like a death threat, everybody’s waitin’ to get hit, it’s like I’m going (going) going (going) out of my mind!”
All your worries melt away as the beat drives your movements. You’re not thinking about dropping a drumstick, missing a measure, losing the competition. You’re doing what you love with people you love, and that’s all you’ve ever wanted to do.
“Think I’m seein’ double in one eye, startin’ to think this air is spiked, no one told me that’s what love is like.” Takuma lets the guitar hang and grips the mic in one hand and the stand in the other, leaning with it as he engages the crowd, and you definitely hear Nobara screaming. “You got me going (going) going (going) out of my mind, yeah, yeah.”
It’s over so fast you can barely breathe, and you’re laughing before you know what’s happening, Yuji throwing his arm around you and shouting, “You killed it!”
Takuma turns around and locks eyes with you, and you see that same adrenaline high in his gaze that you know is in yours, and when the band stumbles off stage in Panda’s wake, he grabs your hand and pulls you into a hug. “That was crazy!” he practically shouts, which is probably good, because your ears are ringing so much you probably wouldn’t have heard him otherwise.
“Guys,” Megumi says, deadpan as always, but you can see the effects of the performance even on him, his usually stoic expression unable to mask his own excitement. “I think… we might have a shot.”
“Holy shit,” Kirara says. “Skip, write the story. Resident pessimist breaks vow of negativity—”
“Oh, shut up.” Megumi elbows her as she dissolves into laughter. In the wings, you can hear the indistinct sounds of Panda’s instructions as he starts voting, and music kicks up over the speakers. Ten minutes. Ten minutes.
It’s the longest and shortest wait of your life, and then you’re back on stage with Black Flash and Panda, and it’s fucking time.
You wonder if everyone else can hear your blood roaring, too.
“Once again, an insanely tight vote,” Panda says, a hush falling over the crowd as they wait for the verdict. “Phenomenal performances from both of our final bands, but someone’s gotta win. Give it up for the champions of this year’s Battle of the Bands…”
You imagine Maki hissing under her breath for Panda to hurry it up, Nobara’s hands clasped together as she anxiously bounces on the balls of her feet, Yuta biting his lip and trying to get Toge to shut up.
Takuma’s hand is on your shoulder, Yuji on your other side, Megumi and Kirara behind you. You glance at Miwa, and she gives you a knowing look that you can’t interpret.
You almost don’t hear it.
“SHIBUYA INCIDENT!”
You don’t know which screams belong to who—maybe one of them’s yours—but you’re swept into a massive pile of musicians drunk off victory, and you’re laughing, and Miwa’s jumping up and down and saying how that was insane, guys, you were amazing, and even Mai nods at you in congratulations, and Yuji is abruptly on Todo’s shoulders, and as the stage lights turn down a bit you finally catch sight of your own band, losing their minds on the floor.
“That’s our girl!” Maki hollers, and Yuta whoops as Toge pumps a fist in the air. You realize you can’t see Nobara, and two seconds later your questions are answered when she somehow materializes on the stage, launching herself at you with a massive grin on her face.
“You did it!” she shouts. “Holy shit, Skipper!”
Everything around you is chaos and laughter and noise, but something in the center of your being is incredibly still, and you think maybe it’s contentment. In this moment, you would ask for nothing else. It is perfect.
Nobara detaches herself from you after more profuse congratulations, turning to Miwa, and the bands make their way gradually off stage. Takuma’s hand is in yours—you don’t know when that happened—and he pulls you past the band, past the wings, all the way into the drum storage room backstage.
“That was fucking amazing,” he says. “You’re fucking amazing.” His beanie is off, tucked into his pocket, his hair as wild as his eyes as wild as your heart.
You close the door.
It’s a pulse. That’s the only way you can describe it, the rush of living energy that comes with kissing Takuma Ino behind the stage of a shitty campus bar, the heat shooting through your veins in time with the throb of the bass from distant speakers. Breath on your teeth and hands in your hair, the warmth in your gut from skin-on-skin proximity, ears ringing with the sound of your name on his lips and love-blind eyes, you’re alive and addicted to a feeling you know you’ll chase forever.
—
TWO MONTHS LATER. DECEMBER 19.
The house is alive with laughter and chatter and Michael Bublé’s Christmas album spinning from the record player. The semester is over, and tomorrow you’ll scatter for winter break, home for the holidays. Nobara insisted on throwing a party before all the inevitable road trips and flights, and the main floor is strung with multicolored lights and tinsel—Yuta’s plant, Rika, even has a tiny Santa hat on.
In addition to the actual residents of the house, Takuma and the band are here, as well as Hakari, Panda, Tsumiki, Miwa, and a handful of other friends. Megumi’s even brought the dogs, who have both taken a liking to the loveseat by the window and claimed it as their own. You’ve informed Megumi that they’re going to stay here with you forever (he said no, but you don’t take orders from him).
“Okay, I’m dropping you off at ten, right?” Yuta quadruple-checks. You’re huddled in the kitchen with him and Maki—Toge was here a minute ago, but he heard someone in the living room mention Just Dance and ran off to assert his dominance or whatever.
“Oh my god, yes,” Maki answers for you. “Yuta. You wrote it down. It’s in your calendar. You live in the same house as Skip, you’re not gonna forget.” She bumps her shoulder with his and he sighs in admission.
“I know.” He smiles at you. “Just gotta make sure she gets home for the holidays. Can’t have you turning into a sad Christmas cliché on us, Skip.”
You salute him with half a gingerbread cookie. “Appreciate it.” He’s taking you to the airport tomorrow for your flight home and refuses to take your gas money, so you’re already planning on beating him to paying for the first grocery run when you get back.
“Things with Mai are good?” you ask, glancing at Maki. She shrugs noncommittally but doesn’t correct you, which is a good sign. She and her sister met up the week after the Battle of the Bands for coffee, which you genuinely thought was a joke when she told you about it. They’re both going home for Christmas and have apparently decided to try and like each other a little more openly. And she actually showed up tonight, which you have to admit you weren’t entirely expecting.
“Yuta!” Toge hollers from the other room. “You have to come do Rasputin with me!”
Yuta groans, looking pleadingly at Maki like she can get him out of this, but she just grins. “You heard him.”
“You hate me.”
“Yeah,” Maki says fondly. Yuta, defeated, goes to join Toge in the dance of death. Maki whispers to you that she’s going to record it for blackmail and slips out after him.
Tsumiki appears beside you, drink in hand, and leans against the wall. She tilts her phone screen toward you and you see it’s the Journal website analytics.
The top story right now is yours. You grin. “Oh, wow. I didn’t realize.”
“I expected it,” she admits, tucking her phone back in her pocket and gazing out across the room. “Look, I’ve been meaning to tell you. We won’t start the application process until spring sem, but, if you want it,” she glances at you, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth, “I really think you should apply for editor-in-chief, Skip.”
Your mouth opens and closes without anything of use coming out, and Tsumiki laughs. “You don’t have to, but—”
“No!” you blurt, grinning. “I—I want to. I would love to. I was planning on it. I just didn’t know you… wanted me to.” Kusakabe’s just the advisor—when it comes to actually hiring the next editor, Tsumiki has the final say. Her endorsement is as good as a job offer. “I… thank you, Tsumiki.” You look down, suddenly overwhelmed by the words. “Big shoes to fill.”
“Aw, none of that,” she says, stealing a cookie from the tray on the counter next to you. “I literally can’t think of anyone better.” With a wink, she disappears through the doorway, where Kirara and Nobara are talking animatedly. Nobara gestures to you when she catches your eye.
“Dude, our listens are shooting up!” she says, shoving her phone into your hands. Your EP dropped mid-November, six tracks recorded in the studio with Takuma and Hakari, and you’ve performed better than you ever expected. The analytics show a sharp uptick that’s probably in large part due to Panda playing your stuff on the radio station.
You whistle, leaning on Nobara’s shoulder. “Awesome.”
Kirara leans against the wall, considering. “You guys thought about what you’re gonna do next year?”
Truthfully, you’ve really tried not to. The idea of Maki and Yuta graduating is so bittersweet. But graduation means Shibuya Incident will have a hole in their band, too. Kirara will be gone.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Nobara muses. “We could join forces. If we lose Maki and Yuta and Kirara, the only thing we’re doubled up on is drums and lead.”
It’s not a bad idea. And if Yuji is track captain next year and you get that editor job, neither of you will have as much time for the band—switching off could actually be very helpful. You hum, considering. You’ll have to talk to the others.
“Oi,” Kirara says, reaching out to poke you with a socked foot. “Your boyfriend’s in lost puppy mode over there.” You glance into the living room to see Takuma scanning the room next to Megumi and the dogs, probably looking for you.
“Dumbass,” you say fondly, and nod goodbye to Nobara and Kirara before making your way over to him. The boys are halfway through Rasputin and Yuta is, much to Toge’s chagrin, kicking ass. Toge looks like he’s just run a half marathon.
Takuma lights up when he sees you, a mischievous smile appearing on his face as he intercepts you by the hall entrance.
“Oh, wow, what is that?” he asks cheekily, and tilts your chin up to see a piece of mistletoe hanging from the ceiling. That was definitely Nobara’s doing. “Crazy that we just happened to—”
You cut him off, dragging him in by the shirt and kissing him, and makes a surprised sound that has you smiling against his lips.
“Crazy,” you repeat after you pull back, relishing the flush on his cheeks. Even after dating him for two months (as of today), every reaction you get out of Takuma makes your heart rate bump up a few beats. “Oh!” he says, suddenly remembering something. “Wait, c’mere, I have something for you.”
“Takuma!” You swat at him. “I told you not to—”
“Boo hoo,” he says, sticking his tongue out and dragging you toward your room, where he dumped his stuff earlier. You quietly close the door behind you as Takuma digs around his bag, standing up with his hands behind his back. “It’s Christmas and it’s been two months. You have no defense. Close your eyes.”
You do, giggling a little as he grabs your hand and presses something into it—something soft. “Okay,” he says, and you open your eyes to see a little stuffed penguin perched in the palm of your hand. It’s fucking adorable.
“Oh my god!” you cry. “Oh, he’s so cute! Takuma.” You cradle the penguin to your chest with both hands, grinning.
“It’s you!” he says, laughing. “Not official Madagascar merch, but I thought it was pretty cute. Your own lil’ Skipper.”
“I love it,” you say, making the penguin do a little dance in the air. You grab its tiny wing and poke Takuma on the nose with it. “Thank you.”
“Merry early Christmas.” His nose scrunches up a little in thought. “Early Merry Christmas? What’s the right way to say that?”
“Happy early nondenominational holiday of your choice,” you say teasingly, because the public university won’t actually say Christmas despite the decorations all around campus.
It’s a running joke among the entirety of the student body that the massive tree in the arts lobby is not a Christmas tree but a secular modern art installation. There are variations of insane alternate tree names on the school meme accounts. The knockoff JU Barstool page even got in on it, and the student groups hosting the Hanukkah and Kwanzaa celebrations.
Takuma’s answering laugh is bright and it follows you as you cross the room to your desk, pulling a box out of the second drawer. “Your turn.”
“What?” He has the audacity to look confused. “Skip—”
You hold up the penguin. “Objection denied!” The box is light and square, and you watch excitedly as he opens it.
“Oh my god,” he says when he realizes what’s inside. “No way. These are the exact ones—how did you even—?”
You had to do some investigating to figure out the precise guitar strings he uses, but what's your journalism degree for if not this?
“Who knows?” You shrug playfully. “Maybe it’s the psychic powers, maybe it’s the housemate I begged to sneak into your room and find out.”
Kirara was more than willing. “Good thing you came to me and not Itadori,” she laughed. “That kid can’t be subtle to save his life.” Takuma’s strings have been on the brink for a while, and you’re honestly shocked none of them have given out yet.
“They’re perfect,” Takuma laughs, setting the box back on your desk. “I love them. I love you.”
He says it so easily it takes you a moment to realize what just happened. He freezes, mouth opening and closing like he doesn’t know what words he’s looking for.
“I—uh,” he says eloquently. “It’s—I mean. I didn’t mean to—I mean, I didn’t mean to say it like that but I did mean it, you don’t have to say it back, if it’s too soon or you—”
Instead of cutting him off verbally, you grab him by the shoulders and press your lips to his. His eyes are wide when you pull back, despite the way he relaxed into the kiss on instinct.
“Hey,” you laugh, one hand trailing up to the back of his neck. “I love you, too.”
The excited smile that spreads across his face is slow and hesitant, like he can’t believe you reciprocate. You pull him back in and feel his grin against your lips, his hands coming to rest at your waist, warm.
“Thank god,” he murmurs between breaths. “Because I keep almost accidentally saying it, and it was gonna happen sooner or later.”
“Least it didn’t happen over the phone,” you grin, your hand skating down his arm and coming to rest in his.
Sheepishly, he admits, “Almost did. Yesterday.” Your laugh is bright and so is his answering one, and you perch your little stuffed penguin atop the guitar strings and tug Takuma toward the door.
“Okay, lover boy. Back to the outside world.”
“Lover boy, huh?” he teases. “Kay, pretty girl.”
“Couple of cheesy ass romantics we are.”
“Mm.” He presses a kiss to your temple, the action so casual and unthinking you want to melt. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The second you step back into the living room, Yuta grabs you by the elbow and presses a Wii remote into your hand.
“Oh, no. Yuta—”
The song’s been chosen for you, and Toge has passed the remote to Maki, who looks like she’d rather die than give a rousing performance of TiK ToK by Ke$ha.
“Well, at least it’s you,” she says. Toge tries to discreetly pull his phone out, but Maki gives him a death glare that could send a grown man to his grave. He nearly drops it in his hurry to shove it back into his pocket.
You snort, patting Maki sympathetically on the shoulder. “Let’s kick ass.”
Three hours later, everyone has somewhat settled down, sprawled across furniture and countertops and the carpeted floor. Yuta’s grabbed an acoustic from the basement and it’s being passed around, goofy Christmas songs overlapping with the still-spinning record player.
You enrolled here with the intention of building a new life, finding a new purpose—new faces, new music, a new place to call home. And you feel like you’ve found it. This is the point of college. You’re surrounded by the best people you’ve ever known, and your heart is practically overflowing with how much you fucking love them all.
After all, your heart is not a finite thing. You’ve just got an endless supply of affection, and you’re not scared of it.
Love is the right word, you think, letting your head fall onto Takuma’s shoulders, legs tucked up beneath you on the couch.
“I love you,” you whisper, just to say it. When he whispers your name, your real name, in the shell of your ear, something in your chest sparks a little. He makes it sound like a song.
a/n: that’s a wrap on out of my mind! ahh! i loved this one a lot, and it has so much spinoff potential i’m going a little crazy with it—keep an eye out for the megumi spinoff dropping soon. if you want to be alerted when it drops, lmk and i’ll put you on the jjk taglist. also, greta wrote a sukuna spinoff here—go read!
@bitchkay i need you to know your reblog tags give me life and you were fucking RIGHT ON THE MONEY with these developments
i’m not sure if i’ll start writing other fandoms or not—if y’all would want to see attack on titan or blue lock do let me know!
🎸 out of my mind ! 💿 track two: kowalski, status report
guitarist!ino x drummer!reader
summary: it's the annual battle of the bands at the fix, your college campus's iconic live music bar, and this year you're taking the stage as the drummer for indie rock group cursed technique. you know the competition is strong, but no part of you is ready for lead singer and guitarist takuma ino. you lock eyes at the edge of the stage, and something starts—something that might make you feel alive even more than the beat of the drums.
It’s the day before the other four artists premiere their sets at Battle of the Bands, and you haven’t been home since six in the morning. You’re running on caffeine and spite and the pursuit of the story, parked on a high stool across the bar from the one and only Ieiri Shoko.
Toge leans on the counter beside you, opting to stand. He’s agreed to pay for the next snack run in return for you letting him be your partner. You both know you’re going to end up doing most of the writing, but you don’t really mind. Toge would if you asked him to, but you love this kind of thing in a way he just doesn’t. Plus, he’s better with a camera than you, and he’s taking photos tomorrow night.
You laugh, pulling out your phone to record. “You can say whatever you want as long as it’s honest. Be candid.”
“You might regret saying that!” Gojo calls from the back, and Shoko silences him with a glare.
“Are you coming or not?”
Gojo grins and finishes up whatever he’s putting away in the storage room, then strides out and leans his elbows on the counter.
“Do you mind if I record?” You point to the open voice memo app. “Makes it easier to quote you correctly.” You also just hate running interviews when you’re scribbling hand-written notes the whole time. You’d much rather have a genuine conversation and worry about the details later.
Shoko waves a hand airily. “No problem.”
“Absolutely,” Gojo says. “You can probably sell that for thousands.”
You set the phone on the counter, next to one of the tiny pumpkins scattered across it in celebration of the beginning of October. You and Toge bounce back and forth as you run through the standard start-of-interview checklist, having them spell out their names, getting their ages, hometowns, degrees, all that jazz. And then you launch into the stuff you really care about.
“So, you opened The Fix about ten years ago now, correct?”
Shoko nods. “Yeah, a little over two years after we graduated.”
You look at Gojo, whose eyes are even more alarmingly blue in the daylight. “And you were hired right away?”
“Utahime first, then me,” he nods. “Best for last, y’know.”
Shoko snorts. “We knew each other in school. I just took pity on him.” She smirks as Gojo’s jaw drops. “You can quote that.”
“Right, so all of you were friends in college. And you came together to start this place—what was the idea behind it?” Toge chimes in. “You said you studied nursing, Shoko?”
And you sit and listen as Shoko explains. Back in college, she was at the top of her class. By graduation, she’d been accepted to basically all the best med schools. She had her pick. She could do whatever she wanted. But she realized that what she wanted wasn’t that at all.
The medical field is brutal, she tells you. It’s all late nights and emotional burnout. People yelling at you, misplaced anger when you give them the bad news. Getting attached to people only to watch them waste away.
“I needed to get out before I got too far in. Maybe it was selfish,” she admits. “But I wasn’t cut out for it. I have so much admiration for medical professionals, but I couldn’t be one of them. A few clinicals and I was already feeling the consequences of giving too much of myself and getting nothing back.” She shrugs. “So I named it The Fix, as some kind of homage to the medical background. And I figured I’d just make sure it’s safe.”
Something sits heavy in her gaze as she stares at something behind you, middle distance, like she’s remembering.
“Why a college bar?” you ask, nudging the phone across the counter to pick up her voice better. “I mean, the extra security, thinking about underage drinking, dealing with a bunch of broke university kids. You could’ve just as easily opened a different bar in a more lucrative area. What was the appeal?”
She smiles crookedly. “Appeal. Well. My senior year, I was working in the local ER. And I saw… god. So many kids came in there needing their stomachs pumped, or kids who’d done laced drugs, gotten roofied, harassed, it was… I mean, it was a city university club scene. They weren’t safe. And I just felt like I needed to give them that. I couldn’t stay there as a nurse or a doctor. But I could do this.” She shrugs. “Sorry. That was probably way too much.”
“No,” you say quickly, smiling at her. “That was—that’s what we came here for. Shoko, that’s amazing. And it’s not selfish, taking care of yourself. You’re still here taking care of others.”
You don’t know Gojo well. Most of your stories about him come secondhand from Nobara, who knows him through Megumi. She paints the picture of a flamboyant, obnoxious bartender who’s more like a weird uncle to her than anything. From what you’ve seen of him at The Fix, you know this to be mostly accurate—he’s rarely serious, always taking flack from the students and giving it right back, ragging on Utahime, begging Shoko to play his playlist instead of Geto’s and knowing she’ll never cave. But now, as he listens intently to Shoko, you think you’re seeing another side of him.
There’s something troubled on his face as she speaks, like he wishes he could reach into the past and help. Like he regrets it.
The bar’s not the only thing that has a different side in the daylight.
“She’s right,” Gojo tells Shoko. It’s not much, but she looks up at him a bit surprised, something in her expression softening. A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, not quite there but not quite not. “You’ve got a pretty big heart under all that RBF.” Shoko rolls her eyes, the moment over.
“What about you?” You turn to Gojo, nudging the phone his way. “Why a college bar?”
Shoko turns toward him, leaning a hip against the bar, just as curious as you are. “I think kids deserve to be kids,” he shrugs. “And if I—if we—can create a space where it’s actually safe for them to do that, it feels important.” His gaze shifts from you and Toge to the empty bar, the stage and floor and high-top tables that tomorrow will be full of music and laughter and students knowing they’re allowed to let loose here.
“There aren’t a lot of places out there that are exclusively for students,” he continues. “It’s this weird phase, college, where you’re figuring out who you are, trying to take risks without losing too much. It’s a lot. And you look at the crime rates, date rape drugs, theft, DUIs, in the city, and it’s just—this place gives them the room to learn and grow and mess around and have a good time without the danger of the… I don’t know. The outside world. Does that make sense?”
He drums his fingers on the countertop, then seems to abruptly remember the recording and stops. “I think it’s just… well, no one’s allowed to take youth away from young people. So that’s why I’m here.”
You wonder what Gojo was like in school. He majored in gender studies, which you’re pretty sure is what Todo is at least minoring in, too—you’re not sure how it’s applicable to anything, but Nobara says he likes to pull his diploma out from behind the bar and say he’s an expert in women. It seems a far cry from this rare, more subdued version of Gojo you’re seeing right now. You’d guess he’s grown quite a bit in the time he’s been here. And Shoko’s been here to witness it.
He’s not a business owner, like Shoko or Geto. And according to Nobara, he definitely doesn’t need this gig to make a living. He’s here because he wants to be.
“These last few years have been nice, in particular,” he offers. “Just ‘cause some of us have kids going here. I mean, you know the Fushiguros. Suguru’s got the twins. And I know Ino’s not Nanami’s kid, but they’re tight.”
“Wait, what?” Nanami is the bar’s primary security guy, a bouncer who never lets a fake ID fool him. He’s part of the reason this place is so safe. Toge spins to look at you as you blurt out the question, caught off guard. “Uh, sorry. I just didn’t—I didn’t know they knew each other.”
Shoko studies you with tired, intelligent eyes, and you can’t help but feel the tables have been entirely flipped. You’re the one being interrogated, wordlessly, by the woman across the counter. You feel like every thought in your head is scrawled across your face for her to read.
“Yeah,” Gojo says, unaffected. “Ino looks up to him a lot, I think. Even though he’s an old man who reads the newspaper for fun.” He snorts. “He’s a good guy, though. And Ino’s a good kid.” He finally clocks the way Shoko’s looking at you and cocks his head, appraising.
Thankfully, Toge cuts in with another question. “So, we’ll be around tomorrow for the bands and to take some photos and observe,” he explains, glancing at you to make sure he’s got the information right. “Will Geto be around?” You’d wanted both owners’ perspectives, and now that Gojo’s reminded you of the twins, you’re even more curious.
“Yeah, Suguru and Utahime will be here tomorrow night,” Shoko says. “And Nanami. Geto would totally be down to talk to you some other time, too, when it’s a bit quieter.”
“Amazing,” you say, pulling the phone back toward you. You’ll need details, follow-ups, but you need to process this first, write some things down while they’re fresh in your mind. ‘Thank you so much for this. We appreciate it.”
“Anytime, kid,” Shoko says, waving you off. “See you tomorrow.”
As you turn off the recording, Gojo and Toge have already devolved into conversation about the bands and predictions about tomorrow night. A few posters are scattered across a low table near the door, and you pick one up, smiling at the blocky lettering advertising Black Flash. There are posters advertising all of the artists, and they look amazing, straight out of one of the alt rock venues in the wider city.
“They’re sick, right?” Gojo calls, nodding to the posters. “I gotta hang those up, actually. Thanks for the reminder.”
You wave goodbye to Shoko and Gojo and lead the way out, Toge just behind you.
“Man,” he says, and you brace yourself, recognizing his teasing tone for what it is. “They said Ino’s name and you look like scared Bambi or some shit.”
“Shut up,” you mutter, elbowing him.
He holds his hands up. “I’m just living in pursuit of the truth! Like Kusakabe would want.”
“Is your camera battery charged for tomorrow?” you say in a blatant attempt at a topic change.
“Okay, sorry I asked, holy shit.” He sticks his tongue out at you. Then he hesitates, frowning, and then he’s pulling out his phone and calling someone in his favorites list before you can see who it is. “Hey,” he greets. “What? No, she didn’t kick me out. Hey. Hey.” You snicker and Toge glares at you, pressing the phone closer to his ear. “Yutaaa,” he whines. “Do you know where my camera battery is?”
—
Even when you’re not the one on stage, you live for Fridays at The Fix. Tonight you’re doing double duty—because of the dual elimination at the end of the round, all of the competing artists are here. It’s not a requirement, but you want to see what you’re up against, and the sentiment seems to have carried. You and Toge are also in reporting mode for your project story.
The band on stage right now is… well, you can’t say new wave metal is really your thing, but it’s definitely theirs, and the audience is loving it. The Cull, you write in your notes. Look up names.
You couldn’t make out the lyrics if your life depended on it. It’s three guys and a girl, vaguely familiar, but you’re fairly certain they’re seniors and absolutely certain they’re baked right now.
“God, this is loud.” Yuta winces, turning to face you, and then his eyes flicker to something over your shoulder. You divert your attention from the stage and just catch the brief commotion in your periphery. Nanami has a kid by the elbow, and he’s escorting him out the side door, expressionless. The kid’s obviously drunk out of his mind, tripping over himself, shouting something that Nanami doesn’t bother to respond to.
Maki follows your gaze and wrinkles her nose up in distaste.
“Who’s that?”
“My cousin,” she says flatly. You glance quizzically at Megumi, who is definitely standing five feet away and not being escorted out of the bar.
“Dude, how much family do you have at this school?”
She sighs. “Just Mai and Megumi and him. Naoya. He’s a piece of shit.”
“Clearly,” Toge says. “He broke the M theme. No respect for the family alliteration.” Maki kicks him in the shin.
“One last round for The Cull!” Panda calls from the stage, and your ears slowly, very gradually stop ringing with the raging new wave music. The stage techs get to work behind Panda as he introduces the next group.
“Up next, making their debut, we’ve got a sophomore girl pop trio. Give it up for MOTION CAPTURE!”
There’s a big cheer from the bar, and you turn to see Geto grinning. Three girls take the stage, the blonde one grabbing the mic and adding, “All caps!” The girl beside her is very obviously her twin sister, though her hair is straight and dark while the blonde’s is tugged into pigtails. Light and dark. The girl on keys has a long, black bubble braid that she pushes out of the way as she settles in to play.
The blonde plugs in her electric and calls out, “Alright, I’m Nanako.” She tests out a chord, the sound reverberating, filling the bar all the way up to its high ceilings. “That’s Mimiko, that’s Remi, and we’re just here to have a good time.”
“Hey,” a voice says behind you, and you jump. You turn to find Takuma holding two drinks, offering one to you.
“Oh! Aw, thanks, you didn’t have to do that. How much do I owe you?”
He rolls his eyes. “Nothing.”
“Takuma—”
“Nothing,” he reiterates. “Anyway, The Cull. Thoughts?”
You take the drink and try it while you think on your answer—it’s the same thing Nobara got you last week. How did he know?
“I didn’t really understand any of the lyrics,” you admit, shrugging. “They weren’t bad. Not really my genre. Do you know them?”
Takuma shakes his head. “I had a gen ed once with that Rin kid, but I don’t know the other ones. These girls aren’t bad, though.” He’s right—they’ve launched into an Olivia Rodrigo cover that’s actually decent. They could work on their voice control, but they’re young and fun and having a good time and working the crowd, and that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
You sing along, alternating between your drink and exchanging quips with Toge and talking with Takuma. You like this new balance between your band and his, the easy camaraderie.
When the girls wrap up their set, you whoop and cheer and Kirara shamelessly watches Hakari move things off the stage, arms bare in his cut-off tank.
“You’re subtle,” Takuma tells her, and she tugs his beanie down over his face.
“Hey!”
You grab his drink before he can spill it and grin as he yanks his hat off and readjusts it. His hair is a fluffy mess underneath, and it’s kind of endearing.
When the girl pop trio is done, two guys take the stage, one in white and one in black. They’re clearly related, dark hair and pale skin and piercing eyes, and Panda introduces them as the Kamos. You don’t know if they’re brothers or cousins or what. But they’re good—they sing a few alt rock covers, play guitar.
“Damn,” Nobara sighs, a little longingly, her gaze settling on Choso as he takes over the chorus. “They’re…”
Beside her, Yuji wrinkles his nose. “Dude. That’s my half-brother.”
Nobara hums noncommittally. “And?”
He groans, tipping his head back and staring at the exposed beams of the ceiling, run through with colored lights. “Why does this always happen?”
Toge is taking more photos of them than is strictly necessary, considering your story is about the bar and not the band, but you let him have this. Scattered throughout the crowd are more kids with cameras, freshmen from the entry-level reporting classes with big underage stamps on the backs of their hands. Somebody mistook Toge for one of them earlier, and Maki hasn’t let it go all night.
You jot down atmospheric notes on your phone, little things that’ll help set the scene for your project lede, keeping an eye on the bar as much as you can. Geto has jumped in at the bar, which he usually does when the place gets busy, and Gojo is terrorizing Utahime again.
“How’d your interview go?” Takuma asks, nodding at your notes. It shouldn’t faze you so much that he remembers what you told him about your story, but you can’t help the little kick of your heart in your chest at the reminder.
“Good! Really good.” And then you catch sight of Nanami, back at the door after calling a cab for Maki’s asshat cousin. “Actually, Gojo mentioned you.”
Takuma’s brows shoot up. “Gojo? Why?”
Nanami has always seemed incredibly reserved, stony and silent in a way Takuma has never been. You don’t want to pry, but you’re also curious about the relationship between them, how they met, what they are to each other. The journalist in you wants to know.
And then there’s the part of you that just wants to know Takuma.
“Well, he was talking about the twins and the Fushiguros, and he kind of mentioned something about you knowing Nanami?” You try to sound casual, jerking your chin toward the door where Nanami is posted, like a tall, blond guard dog.
“Oh,” he says, surprised, but he shrugs, not seeming too alarmed by the question. “Yeah, I’ve known Nanami for… a long time. He’s kind of a mentor. He’s the reason I met Fushiguro in the first place, actually, ‘cause of him knowing Gojo.”
You’re considering asking how exactly they did meet when the Kamos wrap up, Nobara staring up at them dreamily, and the stage clears out for the final artist.
Whatever questions you had are thrown out the window, because you know who this is. Everyone knows who this is.
Fifth-year student and resident SoundCloud rapper, Ryomen Sukuna. Or D!SH0NORED1, according to the posters.
“Oh, here we go,” Megumi groans.
Despite his reputation on campus, you don’t know anyone who’s actually close to Sukuna, except Uruame. You mostly know that he deals at the skate park and that he’s clean about it.
And that his raps are truly, genuinely horrible.
He lets Panda give a stilted introduction and launches into a verse, mic too close to his mouth, making hand gestures or stepping to the beat of his backing track. His tattoos are even more stark and bold under the stage lights.
“My blood type’s B, your type is me, my zodiac Caprisun, it might be controversial but you’re still lookin’ at me, son!”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Kirara mutters. “I’m gonna bleach my eardrums.”
“Caprisun?” Nobara whispers. “Oh, dude.”
You might be a terrible person for thinking it, but watching this guy’s performance makes you feel infinitely better about your odds of advancing in the tournament.
His final song is a new one he introduces as Frosted Flexin’, and Maki looks like she’s about ready to keel over dead.
“Frosted flexin’, I'm the cereal king, pourin' oat milk in the mix, yeah, I'm doin' my thing,” Sukuna spits in his low voice, swaggering up to the front of the stage. You are trying so hard not to lose it.
“Sukuna being an oat milk truther wasn’t on my bingo card,” Toge says.
“Got the swag of a squirrel and the brain of a dove, call me trash, but you're still showin' me love.”
“Thoughts on the amount of swag a given squirrel possesses?” you ask Takuma. He laughs, loud and bright, and then seems to very seriously consider the question.
“I don’t know if campus squirrels have swag. They live in luxury. They probably eat better than we do,” he says. You can’t argue that—you did once see a squirrel outside your sociology class run by with a full bagel in its mouth. “The wilderness squirrels, though, I think they got a scrappy kind of swag. Like, I wouldn’t cross them.”
You nod sagely. “I want them on my team in the apocalypse.”
He nudges you with a shoulder. “Am I on your team?”
You glance at him, make a show of looking him up and down. Maybe you’re imagining it, but you think he’s blushing a little. “I don’t know. How fast can you climb a tree?”
Sukuna is nearing the end of his song, now, saying, “Off-tune, out of sync, yeah, I know it's a sin, but you'll play it back twice 'cause I still might win.”
He actually, physically drops the mic and Hakari swoops in and catches it, clearing his throat and saying into it, “Yep, friendly reminder that equipment’s expensive! Everyone give our last artist of the night a hand, yeah?”
There’s scattered applause and more than a few confused faces as Sukuna lopes off stage, and Panda hops back up to explain the voting system for anyone who wasn’t here last week. “QR codes to the Google form are posted around the bar,” he says.
Out of all eight artists, the bottom two will be eliminated. You’re nervous. But voting was open last week too. You can’t vote as a member of the band, and it’s all done through school Google accounts to avoid double votes or the link getting sent out to non-students.
“Open until tomorrow morning,” Panda reminds the audience. “Results and second round schedules will be posted on the Instagram at some point tomorrow! That’s it for this Friday at The Fix. Have a great night, folks. Get home safe.”
Gojo whoops dramatically from the bar, and Panda gives him a weird look before getting off stage.
Your friends start heading toward the door, and you grab Toge and excuse yourself to catch Geto at the bar. Gojo sees you first. “The newsies!” he calls.
“Like the musical?” you say in lieu of a greeting. “Banger soundtrack.”
“I could dance on newspapers,” Toge says.
“Geto!” The Fix’s other owner smiles at you, soft and genuine. Part of his dark hair is pulled back and the rest hangs loose over his shoulders, a stark contrast to Gojo—like the Kamos, you think, or like Nanako and Mimiko. Light and dark. “We were wondering if you’d be down to set up a time to talk. Has Gojo told you about our story at all?”
Geto smiles, drying a glass and leaning against the bar. “He told me he’s gonna be the front page of every paper in the city, which I assume is a horrid exaggeration,” he says. Gojo looks affronted. “Shoko mentioned you’re doing a feature for class, though. I’d be happy to.”
“We have our Monday night class time open for field reporting the week after this one,” Toge offers. “Will you be around?”
“I will indeed. Utahime, too, if you want to speak to both of us. And Gojo won’t be here, which might be beneficial for you.”
“Suguru,” Gojo gasps, pretending to stagger back. “You wound me.”
“Mhm,” he says, unaffected. “What time works best for you two?”
You set up a time to interview Geto and Utahime, then say goodbye to him and Gojo and run to catch up to your friends. It’s a nice night, and since you didn’t have to deal with instruments, you all decided to walk.
“How goes the… journalisming? Journaling?” Takuma asks when you fall into step beside him.
“Good, all good. Reporting is maybe a better word, but valiant effort.”
“I like journalisming. Can you just submit words to the official dictionary? I’m gonna do it.”
“No,” Toge says, and you blink. He shrugs. “What? I tried once. But the only submission form I could find was for the Bureau of Linguistical Reality and it wasn’t like, a legitimate dictionary form. There’s all these requirements, it’s horrible.”
“What word did you try to submit?” you ask warily, not sure if you actually want to know.
The night is hazy, only small rays of moonlight piercing through the cloud cover, and you make your way through the campus roads guided only by the streetlamps and Maki’s reliable sense of direction.
Part of you wants to ask Takuma to come over, or Yuji to insist the band come over to his place again, just so you can keep talking. But you have work to do, things to write and transcribe, lists of follow-up questions to make, and that’s only your workload for this one class. You still have exams this week, and you need to study now so you can balance it with rehearsals. Assuming you actually advanced to round two, that is.
And part of you worries you might be taking this too fast, too. You don’t typically integrate people into your life so quickly. You like spending time with Takuma and Kirara and Yuji and even Megumi, though he’s pretty quiet. You just don’t want to jump in too far too fast.
At your place, you say your goodbyes and head up to your room to get some work done. Toge uploads his photos and puts them in your project folder on Drive. And you spend the night doing what you do best, aside from drumming—writing.
Youth for the young: JU alumni run safest live music bar in city limits
You don’t even notice the time until it’s past one in the morning, and you’re nearly asleep at your desk. The dark has crept across your room, the only source of light the desk lamp and your laptop screen. Finally, you push the computer shut and flick off the light, flopping into your bed. A few missed messages pop up when you hold your phone up, wincing at the bright screen.
takuma: just letting you know i made the treacherous journey home safely
takuma: many miles of hardship
takuma: thought i was gonna die halfway there
You smirk and type out a reply.
you: did kirara have to save you
takuma: i resent that
takuma: (yes)
takuma: wait why are you up it’s so late
you: journalisming
you: why are YOU up
takuma: travel adrenaline
takuma: (coding project due monday that i just started)
you: TAKUMA
The next text to come through is a voice note, and you can’t help smiling as you hit play and his voice fills the open air of your bedroom.
“Okay, in my defense, I thought it was due next Monday. Which maybe isn’t my defense because it means I just can’t read due dates, or maybe I just can’t read, but I thought I had a lot more time and then one of my classmates texted me asking for help on this block of code and I told him I hadn’t started and he was like oh my god, Ino, it’s due in three days, and I was like no it’s not, we have so much time—turns out we don’t have so much time, so I’m over here staring at my screen until the vessels in my eyes pop—”
He yawns, and it makes you yawn too, despite the screen separating you. “Sorry, agh. Anyway, I have to write this program that uses some kind of randomized generator…”
You find your eyelids fighting gravity, exhaustion washing over you as he explains the project and all the reasons he’s not that worried about getting it done by Monday because actually he’s on a roll and it turns out the code isn’t that different from a similar project he did last year so he can just lift the main blocks over and wow, he’s tired, and you stifle a laugh as the voice memo comes to an end and he says, “Okay, gosh, I should go to bed. You should go to bed. Stop journalisming, Skip, get some sleep. G’night.”
You grin, plugging your phone in and sending him a voice memo of your own.
“I’m done journalisming. Still haven’t written that story on you, though. Night, Takuma.”
The last thing you see before you fall asleep is his reaction to your text. It’s a thumbs up, but after a few seconds, it disappears, replaced with a heart.
—
“I’m gonna die,” Nobara groans.
You’ve been checking Instagram every hour on the hour for the bracket results, but to no avail. The five of you are sprawled out in the living room, a Fleetwood Mac record spinning in the corner, cups of coffee and tea and scattered remnants of breakfast dotting the table and the floor and the windowsill.
You have post notifications on for the Battle of the Bands Instagram page, but you check anyway, as if you somehow missed it.
“Okay,” Maki says. “Cut it out. No phones.”
“Maki,” Toge groans. “How do we live with the suspense?”
“Go around and give a rundown of your week?” Yuta suggests.
“Aw, highs and lows, it’s like elementary school,” Nobara says happily. “I’ll go first! High: annoying slacker guy in my marketing class got a shit grade on the group project and the rest of us got As. Low: Skipper won’t give me Ino lore.”
“Lore,” you mimic. “I don’t have any lore. We’ve known each other for like, two weeks.”
“That’s enough time for lore,” she insists. “What’s your high? Ino?”
“Okay, jeez,” you say. “Maybe it’s that Toge and I had a really good first interview for our project story.”
Toge blinks at you.
“Fine, maybe it’s Takuma.”
Nobara grins in a way you can only describe as malicious. “Okay,” you say, pointing at her. “Low: whatever that is.” She sticks her tongue out at you.
“My low is Skipper bullying me in class,” Toge says. “And my high is she said she’d be my partner, so I’m not gonna fail.”
Yuta nods sagely. “Maki?”
“Uhh,” she says eloquently. “My parents won’t stop pestering me about fall break. But I aced a test on Thursday in anthro, so there’s that.”
“You’re not going home, right?” you ask. She shakes her head resolutely. Maki doesn’t go home unless she absolutely has to—one thing she and Mai actually have in common.
All of your phones go off at once, a mix of buzzes and beeps and Apple watchfaces lighting up, and Nobara screams. “I can’t look!” she cries. “Someone tell me!”
You click on the notification and pull up the post, heart racing.
The first slide is a generic Battle of the Bands announcement with the cool ass graphics you’ve been seeing on the posters. Whoever designs those needs a raise. The second image is the bracket for next Friday, with the first knockout round of three—only one group will move on to the finals. “Who is it?” Nobara asks anxiously, pacing the room. “Oh god, I’m gonna die.”
“Shibuya Incident,” you read off, unable to keep the smile from your face. “Angel.” Nobara groans overdramatically. “And the Kamos.”
You swipe to the next screen, heart in your throat. OCTOBER 18, it reads. THE CULL. CURSED TECHNIQUE. BLACK FLASH.
“Oh my god!” you scream. “Oh my god, we made it!”
Toge yanks you to your feet and starts hopping around the living room, and Nobara shrieks with joy as you pull her into the celebration. Even Maki and Yuta are sporting wide smiles as they watch the three of you bounce around like kids on a sugar rush.
“What, no Sukuna?” Maki teases when you’ve calmed down. Toge clears his throat and does his best impression, going as far as to make his pants sag a little around his waist.
“Frosted flexin’, I’m the cereal king, pourin’… uh, duh nuh nuh, something doin’ my thing,” he says in a deep voice. “Uh… squirrel? Somethin’ fuego, that’s Spanish, uhhh…”
“Oh my god, let me look it up,” Nobara cackles, pulling up SoundCloud. “It’s I’m the king of bad decisions, got a throne made of Legos, took a bite of my mic and said these bars are fuego.”
Yuta physically winces. “Does he really sag his pants like that?”
Toge shrugs. “It felt right in the moment.”
“Wait, who’s the other one eliminated, then?” you ask, running through the bands in your head. Yours, Takuma’s, Black Flash, the Kamos…
“Motion Capture,” Maki says.
“No, it’s all caps. You have to shout it. MOTION CAPTURE!” Toge hollers. Nobara snorts.
You aren’t entirely surprised, but you have a feeling the girls aren’t too put out about it. They’re young, too—they’ll have their time to shine eventually.
You grin, flopping back onto the couch. “Okay, rehearsal when? Tonight?”
“Yeah, I have to go to a friend’s to figure some stuff out for a project, but I’ll be back at like… five?” Yuta says.
“Oh, fuck, I gotta go too!” Nobara says, darting toward the stairs.
“Group project?” Maki asks.
“Shopping! I gotta pick Miwa up in like, ten minutes!”
Maki rolls her eyes fondly. Yuta stands up and grabs his bag, heading toward the entryway, and the rest of you gravitate instinctually to the kitchen. Nobara is out the door moments later with a wave and a shout, and Toge grins.
“What,” Maki deadpans, not a question.
“I printed memes to hide on her Polaroid wall. Be right back.”
You snort, turning your attention to the window to watch Nobara cruise down the block. The view of her sleek, small car is interrupted by Yuta’s jungle of plants.
“I hope they’re not too cold,” he says, frowning as he tugs a jacket on over his white hoodie. “Do they look okay to you?”
“Yeah,” you say, pointing to the one in the white, ovular pot. “Especially this one, it’s getting so big! What’s his name, Snorlax?” Yuta had a phase where he named at least six plants in a row after Pokèmon.
“No, that one’s Rika, after that TV show,” Maki corrects, not looking up. Yuta blinks, looks between her and the plant, whose vines have started to creep up the window. A smile tugs at the corner of his lips. Both of your eyes on her have her looking up from her phone, expression flat and unaffected. “What?”
“Yeah,” he says slowly. “I didn’t know… anyone paid attention.”
Maki shrugs. “You talk to them out loud.”
“Yeah, I guess I do.” Yuta laughs and waves one last time before he walks out, closing the door behind him. You count to five in your head and then whirl on Maki, entirely unable to keep the shit-eating grin off your face.
“Kowalski, status report.”
She blinks at you. “What?”
“I said—”
“No, I know, just—on what? What happened?”
You groan, dragging the heels of your hands down your face. “Maki. Please.” You gesture wildly between her and the door, wondering if she’s genuinely this oblivious or if she’s just as good a liar as Mai. “Are you—did we not just witness the same interaction? Jesus, Maki, put the boy out of his misery!”
Seeing Maki frazzled is not a common occurrence. The most agitated you ever see her is talking about her family or trading passive aggressive jabs with Mai. This is an entirely new sort of disarray—she’s flustered.
“I—what?! I can’t do that! And he’s not miserable. He’s that nice to everyone.”
You groan, burying your face in your hands with your elbows on the counter. “Maki! He likes you. And your face is telling me you like him back.”
She scoffs, turning her head down and crossing her arms defensively. “I’m not messing things up by dating my bandmate. We live together, Skip, he’s my best friend, if things got messy—”
You hold up a hand. “First of all, offensive. I’m your best friend. Second of all, I hear no denial. Also, it won’t get messy. You are the two most mature people in this house and you know how to separate personal from practical. If anything, it’s gonna kill the vibes of the band and the house if you just keep stewing in the sexual tension.”
“Oh my god,” Maki groans. “There. Is. No. Sexual. Tension.”
“There’s always sexual tension,” Toge announces, walking in and jumping up onto the countertop, legs swinging. He looks between the two of you innocently. “What are we talking about?”
“You might be of some help, actually,” you say, turning to Toge with your hands clasped.
“Uh, actually? Not oh, Toge, you’re always so helpful, thank god you live with me and keep my life interesting—”
“Nevermind.”
“No, pleeease,” Toge insists, sticking out his lower lip. “What?” His gaze shifts to Maki, who’s blushing a furious red. His mouth turns into a small O. “This is about Yuta?”
You didn’t think she could get any more scarlet, but here she is.
“Does everyone think that?” she groans, throwing her head back in exasperation.
Toge shrugs. “I thought we were all just quietly skirting around it until you both snapped.”
“Nobara doesn’t skirt around anything,” Maki says.
“Well, there’s no way she doesn’t know,” you point out. “Maybe she just respects both of you enough to leave it alone.”
“Hah!” Toge snorts, poking you in the ribs. “That means she doesn’t respect you. She wants the Ino lore.”
“I’m gonna tell Nobara about the memes.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Abruptly, you realize you never got around to Yuta for highs and lows, what with the chaos of the brackets dropping. “Ah, guys,” you say. “We missed Yuta.” You pull up the house group chat.
you: YUTA DROP YOUR HIGH AND LOW IN THE CHAT
you: YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN
freak no. 1: yes you are
utah: haha aw that’s nice
utah disliked a message from freak no. 1
utah: uhh low is maybe that toge keeps leaving memes all over our room. like i keep finding them tucked in my notebooks and everything
freak no. 1: SLANDER
freak no. 1: LIBEL
you: not the same thing
freak no. 1: SHUT UP
utah: high is someone remembers the names of my plants!! :)
nobara: Sorry, using voice text while I drive. Who knows the names of your plants? You and God?
utah: maki! :)
“Okay, well, respond,” Toge says, poking Maki in the side. She glares at him and likes Yuta’s message.
“Guys,” she says exasperatedly. “What the hell am I supposed to do? Does he know?”
And you’re not sure, honestly. You don’t know that Yuta is even aware of his own feelings, let alone aware that Maki reciprocates them. You shrug helplessly. “How about… ask?”
“Jesus,” Maki says.
“Not him, Yuta.”
Maki socks Toge in the shoulder and levels him with a disdainful look. “You are the bane of my existence.”
“And the object of all your desires,” Toge proclaims in a horrendous Bridgerton accent. He made you watch all of it with him in two days. Maki refused.
Now, she just shoves him, and he squeals as he falls off the kitchen counter.
“Children,” you sigh. “Do you need to be separated?”
“Yes!”
—
“Why is this so hard?” You stand with your feet planted on Takuma’s skateboard, which is confoundingly, entirely different than balancing atop your longboard. “Oh my god.” You lurch forward as the board rolls a bit to the left, unable to stifle the squeal that comes out of your mouth.
Takuma stops it with one foot.
“Your center of balance is lower on a longboard,” he laughs. “Like, here.” His hands wrap around your waist and you tense under his grip, and he immediately freezes, jerking his arms back. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”
“No! No, it’s okay,” you blurt, sheepish. “I just wasn’t expecting it, I—here.” You try to fight the blush furiously rising in your cheeks as you take his wrists in both hands, putting them back where they were. You clear your throat, suddenly too warm. “Um. Okay, so—do you turn the same way?”
“Pretty much. You just lean,” Takuma says, and you shift your weight to your heels, letting him steady you. “It’s a bit harsher than you would on a longboard, though. Unless you want me to send you right into kickturns?” His tone is teasing and you pretend to consider, tapping a finger against your chin.
“Mm. Maybe later.”
You’ve been at the skate park for a while now, and you’ve only recently ditched your longboard for the skateboard. Takuma brought the extra board you saw hanging on his wall the other day, and he uses it to demonstrate while you practice riding back and forth, getting a hold on your balance. After you feel like you can make it a good distance without pinwheeling your arms, you come to a staggered stop beside him.
A flash of blue-green hair grabs your attention, and you watch a kid in a lightning bolt hoodie slip under the ramps. The park has been pretty deserted today aside from a few guys doing tricks in the pit, a chilly Sunday with the sunlight muted by the clouds.
“Ooh, drug deal in action.” You poke Takuma in the side.
“Ah, probably Sukuna. He deals here all the time.” Sukuna’s business is one of those things everyone’s aware of but nobody talks about. He’s consistent and pretty safe, as far as drug dealers go, but he’ll deny any involvement while smoking a joint if he has to.
“Who’s space buns?”
“Uhh…” Takuma narrows his eyes, and the guy slips out again. “Damn, that was fast. Oh, that’s Hajime. Another senior, I think. They hate each other. Fastest deals I’ve ever seen.”
“I wonder how much of his songwriting is just… while he’s really, really high,” you muse. Swag of a squirrel doesn’t strike you as a particularly levelheaded thought, but hey, it’s certainly memorable.
Takuma leans in and says conspiratorially, “I’m pretty sure I heard him dropping bars here the other day when I was with Yuji.”
You snort and look up at one of the smallest ramps, one you think you could handle without falling on your face, and point to it with a raised brow.
“Oh, moving up in the world?” Takuma kicks his board up and starts walking over, and you do the same. Before you put the board down at the top of the ramp, though, you hold it up to the light, noticing a few short, white hairs caught on the surface.
“Is this… fur?” Maybe there was a cat hiding out somewhere when you were over. Kirara seems like she’d have a cat.
Takuma sighs. “Yeah, the dogs shed like crazy. It gets everywhere. I don’t think I even left that on the ground.”
Your jaw drops, and you stare at him until he looks back at you. “Dogs?”
“What? Yeah, Fushiguro’s—”
“Fushiguro has dogs? Dogs plural? In the house?”
“You didn’t know?”
“No!” you cry. “What? Oh my god! Where were they on Wednesday? How many? What are their names?”
Takuma leans back on the rail next to the ramp, grinning. “I can’t believe you didn’t know. Oh my god. They’re so cute. Tsumiki had them Wednesday, I think. Mandated auntie time. Do you wanna meet ‘em?”
“Do I want to meet them?” you repeat, practically bouncing on the balls of your feet. “Uh, yeah. Are they home? Oh my god. I love dogs.”
“I couldn’t tell,” he deadpans, but he’s smiling still. “Yeah, they’re home. And you can meet them if you go down this ramp without dying.”
“You’re cruel,” you say, situating yourself on the board. “But I will. And then I’ll meet the dogs and become their best friend and they’ll love me more than you and Megumi combined.”
“Confident.” He comes up beside you, checking your stance. The ramp didn’t look steep or long at all from your vantage point across the park, but now that you’re atop the board, it feels suddenly very steep and very long. “You got it. Just don’t panic, keep your stance.” He drops his own board and cruises down the ramp, hardly even trying.
“Okay, go!” he calls from the bottom. “C’mon, Skip, the dogs are waiting.”
“Oh, god,” you murmur, the wind catching your words and whisking them away. You ball your hands into fists and push off, planting your foot back on the board and trying to keep your knees bent, but not too stiff, as you careen down the ramp. Don’t panic, keep your stance. You’re at the bottom in what feels like nanoseconds, and the sudden shift from ramp to flat ground has you stumbling off the board with an embarrassingly high-pitched squeak of alarm.
“Nice!” Takuma laughs as he catches you, the board rolling a few more feet ahead. His arm is wrapped around your front, the other holding you up by the shoulder, and this time you don’t tense under his hands.
“Thanks,” you say a little breathlessly, grinning, the tiny spike of adrenaline making you almost lightheaded. He lets his hands drop when you’re steady on your feet, and part of you mourns the warmth a little. But there are more pressing matters at hand. “So, about those dogs?”
You opt for your longboard on the way back down your street, cruising along beside Takuma, who has his extra board tucked under his arm. You’ve got a lot to do tonight, all the last-minute preparation for another crazy week, but you can and will drop everything to pet a puppy. Or two. Always.
And they’re actual angels. Big, fluffy angels on earth, one white and one black, and they’re all over you the second you open the door.
“Hi!” you say happily, sinking down to their level. The white one immediately tries to burrow into your lap. “Oh, hello! You’re so nice, aren’t you?” You glance up at Takuma. “Where’s Megumi?” You grab the white one’s collar and check the tag—Shiro.
“Shiro thinks she’s a tiny dog,” he says, bending down to ruffle the fur behind her ears. “Uh, Fushiguro’s at the animal clinic. He works there Sundays. And Tuesdays, I think.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yeah, he’s a vet student. You didn’t know?”
“I did not.” The black one is licking your face, and you giggle and check his tag, too. Kuro. “Hi, Kuro. You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”
“He’s got such a soft spot for animals,” Takuma says as he kicks off his shoes. “You should see when they both try to sleep in his little twin bed. It’s ridiculous.”
“I love them,” you say, burying your face in Kuro’s scruff. “Hi, doggies. You’re awful cute, you know that? Mhm. Yes you are.”
When you finally look up again, Kuro’s cold nose nudging insistently at your palm, Takuma is leaning against the wall, looking down at you with his phone discreetly angled your way. “Takuma!”
He laughs, not bothering to hide it anymore, very clearly taking photos of you with the dogs. “It’s cute!” he insists. “I’ll send them to you. Proof for Fushiguro of your master plan to make them like you more than him.”
“And you,” you remind him.
“Well, I don’t know about that.”
You gesture pointedly to the two dogs, who are all over you and not him. It’ll be a nightmare trying to get all of Shiro’s white fur off your black jacket later, but it’s worth it.
“You’re new,” he says. “New scent. It’s the novelty factor. I am their favorite.”
“You sure? I’m pretty hard to compete with.”
He smiles, looking from you to the photos he took of you and the dogs. “Yeah,” he says. “You are.”
—
The first half of the new week goes by in a rushed routine of classes, homework, and rehearsals, each night ending with you collapsing into bed, new and old lyrics fighting for dominance in the back of your mind. Sticks re-taped and drum heads re-tuned, assignments turned in and drafts edited. Your classes are ramping up as midterms approach, and Yuta bounces between his own work and poking his head into everyone’s rooms, making sure they don’t forget about dinner.
Toge follows through on his snack run promise, and the two of you spend hours on Tuesday afternoon trading two different flavored bags of Doritos back and forth, Toge writing photo captions while you edit your story lede.
Takuma, Hakari, and Kirara have offered to help Cursed Technique record a single on Wednesday night, and the five of you have been drilling the new song you wrote up, down, and sideways.
Finally, Wednesday arrives, and you’re all crammed into the recording studio space, instruments set up and headsets tuned in.
“Yeah, I’m good,” Nobara says to Hakari on the other side of the glass. She taps a finger on the mic in demonstration, and you hear it in your own headphones.
“Great,” he says. “Skipper?”
“Skipper? I hardly know her,” Toge says, earning a harmless smack upside the head from Yuta and a not harmless smack upside the head from Maki.
“I will throw these at you,” you tell him, holding up your sticks. Toge sticks his bottom lip out, pouting.
A snicker from beside you draws your attention back to Takuma, kneeling just beside the throne as he adjusts the kick mic. He has you hit it a few times while Hakari monitors the levels. You feel oddly self-conscious like this, him looking up at you, but then he smiles and it’s not strange at all. It’s stupid how fast he can put you at ease with a look.
“Nice,” he says. “Okay, that should work, yeah, Hakari?”
It’s Kirara who answers, “Yeah, you’re good.”
Takuma stands up, claps his hands together once, and looks at you. “Okay. Kill it, Skip.”
“Yessir.” You salute him with a stick and he makes his way to the other room, closing the door behind him.
“All good?” Yuta asks, glancing at each of you in turn before giving Hakari a thumbs up. It’s strange to be on this side of the glass, to think about your music being played back, to think about it on Spotify, out in the world.
“Next Fix,” Takuma says into the mic, locking eyes with you through the window. “Take one in three, two…”
The song starts out simple. You click your sticks together near the mic, on two and four, while Maki lays down a four-bar loop.
Yuta keeps glancing at Maki while she plays, utterly unaware, and the look on his face is so soft you want to shake Maki by the shoulders until she does something about it.
Nobara’s got her eyes closed with the headset over her ears and her hands around the mic, entirely engrossed in the song.
“It’s comin’ on, comin’ strong, spinnin’ up out of the blue, mmm,” she sings, stretching out the vowels. “And I’m on the ground, bleedin’ out, until my next fix of you, ooh.”
Now you start up with a light rock beat, closed hat and a bit of a dragging buzz on the snare hits. Just as you transition into the beat, Toge comes in with some low chords and Yuta moves down the line in syncopated sixteenths.
Hakari is nodding approvingly and Takuma has a wide grin on his face, and you can’t help smiling back.
“I need it like a lung,” Nobara sings, swaying a bit. “I need it like a light. It’s got me twisted up. I need you here tonight, tonight, tonight, oh, oh, I wanna—”
And this part is your favorite—Nobara sings each two-syllable phrase while you pound on the toms twice, emphasizing it with the kick, and then the backup vocals echo her. Get my (get my) next fix (next fix) of you (of you, of you, of you.)
Kirara pumps her fist in the air twice, in time with the beat, and your bandmates can’t keep the smiles off their faces. You’ve got something here, you really do. This might be your best one yet.
When the song’s over, Nobara whoops and tugs off the headphones, jumping around the cramped studio space with a grin on her face. “That was so cool! Oh my god. Guys, we sound good. We actually sound good.”
“Damn,” Kirara calls. “Okay, girl drummer. Good shit.”
“Not bad for a first run,” Maki admits, adjusting her bass strap over her shoulder. “Do we wanna try recording backups separately at all?”
“Good call.” Takuma nods. “Let’s run that again without the backups and record them over, see what happens.” He’s in full producer mode, flipping switches, colored lights reflecting in his eyes as he and Hakari talk shop away from the mic. He’s good at this, you realize, running sessions like this, making sure things go where they need to go, that everyone’s heard, that things get done. It’s a little bit like watching him skateboard, or seeing him on stage. There’s a confidence to him here, a smooth, easy energy. He’s in his element.
“Alright,” he says after a minute. “Let’s hear that again.”
And you play it again. And again. And again. And you are so in love with this moment, with your band, with a couple rowdy kids on the other side of the window, the rasp in Nobara’s voice and the expression on Yuta’s face and Maki’s obliviousness and Toge’s consistent, head-banging keys, and your drums and your words and the music, and the lyrics feel right to you.
a/n: GUYS. loml @shutuppeter is so downbad for soundcloud rapper sukuna that she's writing fanfic of my fanfic😭 credits for frosted flexin' are all hers LMFAO so go check that out (MDNI for that one though).
yutamaki nation rise. also, i kinda love this fic. there may be spinoffs for other characters in the works...
