Work Text:
“Well, isn’t it Y/N!” You glance up from your phone.
“Oh, Tadashi’s mum and dad! I was about to head over to yours,” you raised a paper bag. “My mum made some new side dishes and wanted to share them with you.”
“Well isn’t that sweet of her! I’ll tell you what, my mother in law just sent us some Umeshu. Take a bottle back for your parents. We were just about to leave, but Tadashi’s home, so get him to tell you that.”
“Thanks!” You wave them goodbye.
Your mum and Tadashi’s mum were all chummy with each other, having been “bosom friends” since university, as they call it. That meant you and Tadashi were naturally good friends from a young age, and now, having moved close to their homes, this coming and going of goods between the L/N house and Yamaguchi house had become the norm.
“Open up, Tadashi,” you call, banging on his front door. “Special delivery from a special friend.”
The door opens. You were levelling your eyes at the wrong location - this recipient was, in fact, taller. You tilt your head up to see Tsukishima from your class. You’ve never seen him outside his school uniform. “Oh, hey. I didn’t know you were hanging out with Tadashi,” you say awkwardly.
“L/N”, he greets, “Yamaguchi’s just gone to get something from upstairs.”
“Oh, no worries, I just came to drop thi-”
“Tadashi!” he calls back into the house. “Your special friend’s here.”
Normally you’d be brazen enough to just barge in, slide everything into the fridge and snatch up that bottle Tadashi’s mum had mentioned, but now you’re helpless in order to give Tsukishima the impression that you were a polite citizen.
“Come on in to the genkan at least. It’s hot outside.” He holds the door open.
“Thanks, I’d love that.” For a few seconds you bask in the chilled air of the air conditioning, recovering from the sweltering summer heat. You clear your throat. “How’s your summer holiday so far?” You never really talk to him outside class so you don't know much about him despite having such a close mutual friend. You've only heard stories about him here and there, and otherwise you were just classmates and nothing more.
“It's been good,” he says politely. ”A lot of volleyball training though. We’ve got a summer camp soon to prepare for. How about you?” he asks.
“I've been trying to be productive,” you say. “I can’t believe we have so much homework for the summer.” It’s a bit of a lie. You were just sent out on a chore by your mother for being a lazy bum around the house.
Before Tsukishima can reply, a familiar voice calls out to you, followed by footsteps thudding down the stairs. “Y/N! Mum just texted. What are you doing, come on up!”
You just hold up the bag. “Delivery from mum again. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t want to interrupt your hangout, I’ll just leave this with you.”
Tadashi understands, and glances at Tsukishima, who snorts. “I don’t mind. We’re not complete strangers.” Hearing that makes you a bit warm inside.
“Yeah, come up. Tsukki, can you get her some water? Mum told me about the Umeshu, "I need to find something to open the box with.” He thunders up the stairs again.
Abashedly you tail Tsukishima into the kitchen, and he gets you a glass of water while you start laying out the containers your mum packed for you on the counter.
“Uh, I’ve been trying to do at least 30 minutes of it every day so I won’t have to cram it at the end.”
“What?”
“The homework,” he says awkwardly.
You recall the small talk from earlier, and you laugh. He’s trying to keep up the conversation. “Oh, I see. Yeah, I don’t understand why we still have summer record keeping in the second year of high school. I thought we left that in primary school.”
He snorts. “For sure, it brings back memories. Tadashi and I had that at our school too. He’d spend so much time on them but basically every day was the same as each other because that’s how boring his summer was. At least I tried to mix things up by lying.”
You know what, this guy wasn’t bad at all. “There’s no way I didn’t think about those. I wonder if he’s still got them upstairs, I’ll need to have a look at it now.”
“Take a look at what?” Tadashi had come back, a bottle of plum liquor in hand.
“Your primary school summer diary,” Tsukishima smirks. “And how you got low marks just because your summer was so boring that your teachers thought you were replicating every entry.”
“You can’t say that! At least I didn’t lie!”
“It’s not lying, it’s giving the poor teachers some good material to read!”
“You said that you visited the Moon!”
“I didn’t say I visited the Moon, I visited the origins of my family name!”
“Yeah, and you forgot to write the ‘Shima’ in ‘Tsukishima’.”
“Drop it,” your classmate grits out over your laughter, his ears tinged a bit red. “You wouldn’t bully a kid over accidentally omitting 2 letters. Well, did you find your playing cards in your room? Take them out. Let’s play.”
You and Yamaguchi are still laughing. “C’mon, cards. Let’s play cards.”
Look. You were planning to go as soon as the delivery was over, but one thing led to the next. Playing cards were not fun with just 2 players as it limited the range of games you could play, so you agreed to join for a round, and that round turned to 2 rounds, and 2 to 3, until the “loser has to confess a truth game” started to get incorporated, and who can blame these teenagers for taking a bottle from the pantry and taking shots as well…
“I have to go home soon,” you say distractedly, glancing at the clock on the wall. It’s been several hours, but they had passed in a blink of an eye. You all trooped back to the kitchen to sober up with some water, discretely cleaned up after yourselves and bid Yamaguchi farewell.
“I thought you were really scary!” You’re chittering away happily with your new friend, slapping the blonde guy to your right on his back. “I was surprised when you were Tadashi’s good friend.”
“What’s that meant to mean,” Tsukishima scowls at you.
“I don’t know, I heard your name a lot before and I did have a mental image of you but it was completely different! I had to double take when I first transferred into school!”
He’s peering down. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
You ponder. “I don’t know, it's neither. I was just surprised because your character seemed different from Yamaguchi’s.”
“Right.”
“You’re cool though.”
“Thanks.”
“Today was actually fun.”
“Same here.”
You get to an intersection and you slow down. “I have to turn right here, but I don’t really want to say good bye.”
If you were completely sober you would probably strangle yourself. That was such a corny thing to say but you said it unabashedly. Tsukishima stills but doesn’t seem to react badly to you. He just breaks the silence by giving a small laugh.
“I can walk you home.”
And so he walked you back home, carrying the bottle sent by Tadashi’s mum. Along the way, he lends you an earphone.
“No way. I love this band!”
“Really?”
“Really. I’ve got their albums and everything. They’re releasing a new CD next week!”
“Yeah,” he says carefully. “I was planning on going to buy it.”
“No way! Me too!”
The two of you stopped outside your gate.
“Thanks for walking me home.”
“No worries.” He kind of just stands there. And you kind of just stand there expectantly too.
“Do you want to go buy the CD together?” “Maybe we can go get it next week?” The two of you ask each other in a jumble of words.
And that was how you had obtained his number, bid each other farewell, and walked back into the house. Only when you had some food, showered and climbed into bed, did you look up at the ceiling and realise what a weird sequence of events had just played out.