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Darth Vader. It’s two a.m. and the bed is soft and Kyoutani’s brain is still mushed together - like mushy mushing mush, or something - and the only thing he can hear is the Darth Vader theme track, blaring from his phone, like a ringtone, except it is a ringtone, a ringtone he saved for one person, one who hadn’t called in months, not since he got recruited and moved to Sendai and Kyoutani is fumbling and it’s dark and his brain is mushing and his heart is mushing and—
“Fuck you,” is the voice on the other end of the line. “Fuck you, you fuckhead.”
“Yahaba?” Kyoutani rubs his eyes. Words. Words and thoughts. That is what he needs. Words and thoughts that are more than three syllables and more than just Yahaba and finally and what the fuck. “You called.”
“Yeah.” A huff. “I did.”
Kyoutani blinks. His brain mushes. “The fuck?” it supplies.
“You, you fucker, the fuck is you.” Yahaba sounds mad. Kyoutani is putting things together. Yahaba sounds maybe a bit mad, probably, and Kyoutani is maybe a bit mush, definitely, and Yahaba is on the phone, almost certainly, and Yahaba and Yahaba and Yahaba and finally. “I mean, seriously. We weren’t even ever friends?”
Yahaba spits the word out, just like how he used to say Kyoutani’s name, and Kyoutani sinks back into his bed. He had missed this. “Hi,” he breathes.
“Yeah. Hi.” A pause. “Hello. Whatever.” Yahaba huffs out again. “Point is: fuck you, fuck your little interviews, and fuck your little life.”
Interviews. Kyoutani scrunches his forehead, trying to force the mush into semi-solid shapes that could be considered thoughts. Interviews, interview, interviews— oh.
”How have you liked playing for the Sendai Frogs?” the reporter with the nice smile had asked, smiling her nice smile up at him. “Do you get along with your teammates?”
Kyoutani wiped away some of his post-game sweat away, scowling. He hated interviews, and questions, and words, and smiles, and Tsukishima, for being good enough at interviews and questions and words and smiles to draw the media to their games. “Fine.”
“Fine?” The lady’s teeth gleamed like a teleprompter.
Kyoutani grunted. He fucking hated teleprompters. “Yeah. They’re all fine.”
The telemprompter lady laughed. That was another thing Kyoutani hated. Interviews, and questions, and words, and smiles, and laughing, and all the other things teleprompters tried to shove down your throat. (Tsukishima was too tall to properly be shoved down anyone’s throat.) “It must be hard being such a loner in a team sport.”
Kyoutani shrugged, grunting. “I’ve never been friends with my teammates,” he said. “It’s fine enough.”
Except it isn’t, as it turns out, it clearly isn’t, because if the tone of Yahaba’s voice is anything to go by, nothing is fine. “Oh.” Kyoutani’s eyes flutter shut. “The interview.”
“Three years.” Yahaba’s voice is a low hiss. “Three years we played beside each other, three whole-ass years I spent dealing with your gorilla-like language abilities, and I didn’t even get to be called your friend?” His laugh is sharp. “I mean, really. I studied you, I supported you, I got you to stop being such a little bitch, and I could probably build a fucking dictionary of— of— of fucking, I don’t know, Gruntanese, or some shit, but fuck you, you fucking inarticulate man-child, because I still don’t even count as a friend, not even a friend, you—” Yahaba’s voice breaks off, his breathing hard. “Fuck.”
Kyoutani is quiet. He considers. Mushes. Attempts a thought. “You watch my interviews.”
A long silence. “That can not be what you took away from this.”
Kyoutani grunts, running his free hand through the spiky ends of his hair.
Yahaba audibly sucks in his breath on the other end of the line. “Okay, well, fuck you, bitchface, I guess I didn’t even earn the right to some fucking auditory comprehension—”
“How many?
“Huh?”
“How many of my interviews have you watched?”
“I—” Yahaba stops. “They— I don’t know, they just pop up on my feed sometimes. The algorithm, you know, it recommends some shit, and then more shit pops up, and—”
“The algorithm thinks you like my interviews.”
“No, no, it doesn’t, I don’t, I—” Yahaba huffs out loudly. “Okay, fine, maybe, I’ve watched, like, some of your interviews, but not because I want to, or, you know— fuck this. Fuck you. I don’t have to explain myself, not to you, not after you’ve been ghosting me for, like, months—”
Kyoutani frowns. “I haven’t been ghosting you.”
“Oh really?” Yahaba barks out another laugh. “Then why is it that the only time we’ve called since you moved has been to talk about the fact that you said everybody who ever gave a crap about you is just ‘fine enough?’”
“I was…” Kyoutani waits for a sentence to come. “I dunno. Just waiting for you to call first, I guess.”
“Of course. Of course you were, because of course I’m the only one who’s supposed to reach out and make an effort and actually care, because of course I’m the only one who cares, because of course you literally left me behind for a whole new life—”
Kyoutani’s scowl deepens. “I didn’t leave you behind.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, that’s right, you didn’t, because one pretty lady smiles at you and suddenly there wasn’t ever even a friendship to leave behind—”
Mush. Mush, and mush, and Yahaba, and finally, and mush. “We weren’t ever friends, Yahaba.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, Yahaba, it’s not—”
“No, no, because fuck you, I can’t believe you just said that shit to my face—”
“I can’t see your face—”
“Oh, wow, really smart observation, Kyoutani, that definitely made me feel a whole lot better—”
Kyoutani squeezes his eyes shut. It’s two a.m. and the bed is soft and Yahaba called and Yahaba and Yahaba and Yahaba. “We weren’t ever friends, Yahaba, because we weren’t ever just friends. You know that. I know that. We were—” Yahaba waits. Kyoutani waits. His brain waits. “I dunno. I didn’t leave you behind.”
“Yeah. Well.” Yahaba’s voice is quieter now. “Could’ve fooled me.”
The line is silent for a long while. Kyoutani rakes his hand across his hair again. “I gave you a special ringtone,” he says, finally.
Yahaba doesn’t respond. Kyoutani takes a big breath.
“It’s the Darth Vader theme.”
“Fuck you, I’m hanging up.”
Kyoutani barrels through anyways. “I just wanted to know that it was you calling me. To prepare in advance.” He glances down at his white sheets. “I dunno. It reminds me of you.”
“What, because I’m the villain?”
“Kinda, yeah.” One corner of Kyoutani’s lips turns upwards. “You fuck me up.”
Yahaba is silent for a long time. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
Kyoutani grunts.
“I’m not—” Something rustles on the other end of the line. “I’m not good at this.”
“Me neither.” Kyoutani stares up at his ceiling. “The whole phone thing, the calling first thing— I just. I didn’t know how. Words.”
“That’s not a full sentence.”
“You’re not a full sentence.”
A huff. “Yeah, well, I’m fuller than you.”
Kyoutani can feel himself start to smile. He reminds himself to hate it. “I’ll call,” he says after a long pause. “Next time.”
Yahaba hums, skeptical. “When’s next time?”
Kyoutani glances at the clock sitting on bedside table. “Five hours from now. When I wake up.”
Yahaba’s voice is as soft as the bed. “You promise?”
Kyoutani grunts.
“Words, Mad Dog.”
Kyoutani huffs out loudly. “Fine. I promise I’ll call, or whatever.”
Yahaba is silent for a long while. Then: “Deal.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Deal. You call me. Only—” Yahaba pauses. “Not as friends.”
Kyoutani bites the smile tugging at his lips. “We’ve never been friends.”
“Yeah, because you think of me as some sort of twisted Darth Vader, which is still not a compliment, by the way.”
“Fuck compliments.”
“Fuck you.”
“Five hours.”
“Yeah. Okay. Five hours. I’ll keep my ringer on.”
Kyoutani glances down, his voice gruff. “It’s a date then.”
Yahaba’s breath catches. “Five hours,” he repeats, his tone a warning, and the line clicks dead.
Five hours. Kyoutani lets his phone drop to his chest, the corner of his lips pulled upwards despite himself. Five hours. He settles back into his sheets. It’s a little past two a.m. and the bed is softer than before. Everything is softer than before. Kyoutani is softer than before, so soft that he can’t even bring himself to hate the one thought blinking up at him from the teleprompter inside of his mind, words shining on the inside of his eyelids as he tries to force his heartbeat to let him fall back asleep.
Finally. Fucking finally.