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Chapter Text

Ukai Keishin was not—and had no interest in becoming—a father. 

There were a number of exceptionally logical reasons for this. 

Firstly, Ukai didn’t actually enjoy the company of children—in fact, he found children to be generally unpleasant. They were loud, and rude, and annoying; and, to top it all off, had the baffling ability to become sticky in places that no person should ever become sticky. 

Secondly, children were disruptive. Ukai had a routine to his days, one that he very much appreciated, and he dreaded the thought of his (mostly) peaceful existence being disturbed by a pack of quarrelsome brats. Children, invariably, asked questions. Ukai hated being asked questions, especially nonsensical ones that he couldn’t answer.

Thirdly, Ukai hadn’t even been able to keep the goldfish his brother gave him as a joke alive, and so had much less faith in his ability to look after a child. Children, after all, were usually more intelligent than fish, and quite a bit faster on their feet, too. 

For these reasons, Ukai had for many years deliberately and successfully avoided putting himself in situations where he was responsible for children. He declined his aunt’s requests to babysit; he lost the invitations to his friends’ children’s birthday parties; he used protection. He managed twenty six—happily childless—years. 

Of course, all his careful strategizing went out the window the moment he agreed to coach the Karasuno Men’s VBC on a permanent basis. 

At first, he didn’t think it would be that bad. His team were highschoolers; surely they could look after themselves, right?

Wrong.

It took Ukai approximately two and a half days at Karasuno to realize that the VBC was only functional through sheer willpower, spite, and their Captain’s impressive lung capacity. Half the team were unapologetically reckless monsters who didn’t know the meaning of the word fear, and the other half were merely pretending to be responsible so they could get away with doing something ill-advised the moment his back was turned. 

It proved exhausting, looking after them. Ukai sometimes felt like he was trying to empty the ocean with a leaky bucket, trying to keep one kid or another from dying or panicking or supergluing their hands together. He could’ve made things much, much easier for himself if he confined his responsibilities to the team to the volleyball court—if he was their coach, and only their coach, and nothing more. If he maintained his distance.

But Ukai had never believed in doing things halfway. 

He couldn’t maintain his distance, he had to get involved, because Hinata didn’t eat right, dammit, and Kinoshita would be twice the player he already was if he gained some confidence in himself, and Tsukishima would care more if someone just gave him a shove in the right direction—

Ukai Keishin was not—and had no interest in becoming—a father. He’d somehow become responsible for fourteen children regardless.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

1. Sawamura Daichi

In Ukai’s opinion, Sawamura Daichi made for an excellent team Captain. He had achieved that perfect, nebulous blend of considerate, inspiring, and absolutely not to be crossed: driven enough to arrange practice on his own, mature enough to ensure that everyone got home safely afterwards. Even outside of practice, he was the obvious foundation of the team—the outstretched hand that shielded them from harm, the solid ground beneath their feet. He was a leader, a mentor, a guide. 

(He had also, apparently, conducted an unholy bargain with some power of the night in exchange for the ability to quell his rowdier teammates with a single glance. Ukai was kind of jealous, honestly.) 

And—as exceptional as he was a Captain, Sawamura was an equally exceptional student and upperclassman. He got good grades in his college prep courses. He was never late. He bought the entire team meat buns once a week despite his rather meager allowance. In short, he was the kind of kid Ukai would’ve hated back in highschool, because he was doing it all, and doing it with apparent ease. 

But Ukai remembered being seventeen, and no seventeen-year-old—no matter how mature or responsible—had it together one hundred percent of the time.

He was proven right one cool night after evening practice, when he found himself leaving the school grounds later than usual. Normally, he departed right after practice ended so he could start his shift at the shop, but his mother had agreed to cover him once a week so he could stay and talk to Takeda about the team’s progress. 

(He was . . . proud of the little monsters, he really was.)

He stepped outside, already fishing around in his pocket for a cigarette, when he happened to glance back up at the school building. The clubroom light was still on, casting soft illumination out over the night-darkened yard. 

Ukai frowned. The third-years took it in turns to lock up, which meant that one of them was still up in there, doing god-knows-what at—he checked his phone—eleven o’clock at night. 

Growling with irritation, Ukai took the steps up to the clubroom two at a time. He clearly recalled telling all his players to go home and rest at the end of practice. He also clearly recalled what the teenage libido was like, and fervently hoped he wasn’t about to walk in on some sort of late-night clandestine hookup. It would probably scar him for life. 

But when Ukai threw the club room door open, a reprimand already on his lips, he didn’t find an illicit teenage affair: he found Sawamura, alone, slumped over on one of the benches and obviously dead asleep. Ukai cursed and grabbed for the door, but he was too slow. It slammed into the opposite wall with a thud, rattling the lockers against one another in a screech of metal. 

To Sawamura’s credit, he didn’t flail or shout; he simply sat up, mumbled, “Mom, I’m going ,” and then promptly fell off the bench.  

Ukai winced. More than one juvenile scuffle during his own time at Karasuno had taught him nothing if not that the floor in here was quite unforgiving. He crouched down to Sawamura’s level, and carefully peeled the piece of paper that had stuck to Sawamura’s face away from his cheek.

Sawamura, wakening to the abrupt realization that he was not in fact at home in his own bed, flushed a deep brick red. 

“Coach,” he said, burying his face in his hands. “Oh, gods. Coach, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how this happened—I was so tired—it won’t happen again, I promis e—”

“Relax,” Ukai said gruffly. There were things worth fretting over—their chances at getting to Nationals, the truly concerning amount of yogurt drinks Kageyama consumed on a daily basis, the toothy grin on Tanaka’s face when he’d stuffed an unidentifiable package into his bookbag earlier—but this was not one of them. 

He glanced down at the paper he’d liberated from Sawamura’s cheek, raising his eyebrows at the neatly penned lists of warmup exercises for next week’s practices. Sawamura scrambled to his feet, collecting the rest of the scattered papers into a haphazard pile. 

“I’m sorry,” Sawamura said again, stiffly. He wouldn’t meet Ukai’s eyes. “I lost track of time. You trusted me to lock up, and I didn’t. There’s no excuse.” 

These kids. Ukai despaired of them. When he’d been seventeen, his primary concern had been seeing how much of his father’s sake he could sneak before he threw it all back up. Falling asleep in the club room—once!—wasn’t that big of a deal, in the larger scheme of things. 

“It’s fine,” Ukai said. “It happens. Now, about this.” He held the paper up, waiting for Sawamura’s eyes to reluctantly drag up to meet his. “You’ve been writing these out yourself?”

He’d assumed, when Sawamura had come prepared every week with lists of warmup exercises with which to lead practice, that he’d been reusing material from previous years, when Karasuno had actually had a coach to take care of such things.

“Uh, yeah.” Sawamura fidgeted, the shadows under his eyes seeming to grow deeper by the moment. He was so different around Ukai, all the unwavering confidence he used to motivate and/or intimidate his teammates fracturing into cautious respect. Sometimes, watching him command the court like a general at the head of an army, it was easy to forget he was just a kid. “Sorry; if they’re not good, I can rewrite them.”

He extended one hand for the paper. Ukai frowned, holding it out of his reach. “You really shouldn’t be doing this. This sort of thing is the coach’s responsibility. Not yours.”

“It’s fine,” Sawmaura said, still eyeing the paper in Ukai’s hand. “I don’t mind, Coach. It’s not that much trouble.”

Ukai snorted. “Really? I find you passed out up here from sheer exhaustion, and you’re gonna try and tell me it’s no trouble?”

Sawamura flushed. “I—”

Sighing, Ukai retrieved a cigarette from the interior pocket of his coat and lit it irritably. He knew enough about the VBC’s previous struggles from his grandfather, and what he hadn’t known, Takeda had easily filled in. Lacking a coach, lacking funding, lacking the connections to other schools that would have allowed the team to hone their skills, it had fallen to the third years to try and keep the club together any way they could. Which meant that, for many long months, Sawamura had been functioning as Coach as well as Captain. No wonder he’d been up here alone writing out the lists of warmup exercises. He hadn’t known to expect help from Ukai. Probably hadn’t even known that he was allowed to ask for it.

“Kid,” Ukai said, once the sweet smoke had filled his lungs and calmed some of his agitation. It was a bad habit, he knew, but he was now of the opinion that some bullheaded teenagers would probably kill him before the cancer had the chance. “The next time you find yourself doing this sort of thing, come to me first and ask if I can do it. This is not your job. You do enough.”

Sawamura’s face creased into honest confusion. “But I’m the Captain.”

“Yes,” Ukai said impatiently. “Which means you keep your batshit teammates from killing each other, you help plan strategy, you lead stretching. You don’t—”

He leaned forward, and pried the rest of the papers out of Sawamura’s hand.

“—write the warmup exercises. I do that.”

“But you already do so much,” Sawamura said, and it didn’t even sound sarcastic, coming from him. “I don’t want this to be a burden on you.”

Ukai almost laughed, puffing cigarette smoke out of his nose. “This whole job is a burden on me.”

Sawamura froze, and Ukai played his words back. Ah, shit. That hadn’t come out right.

“What I mean,” Ukai said hastily, “is that I get paid for this. And it’s a burden I accept willingly.” 

Well, mostly willingly. There had been the small matter of Takeda allowing him no peace for weeks on end, but Ukai had moved past that. He’d never admit it, but it had taken only a single practice for Ukai to fall a little bit in love with coaching, and with these ridiculous, impossible children and their ridiculous, impossible dreams. They reminded him of what he could have been. What he might have been, if he’d tried a little harder.

“Okay,” Sawamura said, still seeming reluctant. “But I can do it, really—”

Ukai almost groaned. He should’ve known Sawamura wasn’t going to let it go. The same intractability that made him an excellent Captain also made him kind of a pain in the ass to have an argument with. “How about this,” he proposed. “Takeda and I get together once a week to talk over the club’s progress. You can join for the first thirty minutes, and we’ll write these lists together.”

“Great,” Sawamura said, his face brightening, and Ukai had never seen a teenager look so enthused at the prospect of more paperwork. “Thanks, Coach!”

“Whatever,” Ukai grumbled. “Now hurry up and get out of here. You need to eat and go the fuck to sleep.”

“Right!” Sawamura hastened to collect the rest of his belongings, stomping his feet into his street shoes. Ukai waited for him to flip the lights off and lock up, taking long drags off his cigarette. They set off together along the darkened street, Ukai already miles away and thinking about what he was going to have for dinner. His mother had been on his case recently about the amount of instant ramen he’d been consuming, but Ukai had eaten much worse and survived, so another night of rubbery noodles wasn’t going to kill him. Probably.

“Uh, Coach,” Sawamura said after a while. “Wasn’t that your turn back there?”

Ukai grunted. “Yeah.”

“Then why are you . . . “

“I’m walking you home,” Ukai said. “What if someone tried to kidnap you? There are all sorts of crazy people around these days.” And Ukai would know, seeing that an inordinate amount of said crazy people seemed to frequent his shop, especially on days he was already strung out and exhausted.

Sawamura frowned, consideringly. “Thanks. But, I think I’d be rather hard to kidnap, don’t you?”

That was probably true. Not only was Sawamura built like a brick shithouse, he had also faced down Sugawara high on a sugar rush and threatening to gut him with a spoon with no apparent fear. A man with a backbone like that was probably immune to being kidnapped. 

(Then Ukai thought about seeing Sawamura’s face on one of those milk boxes Kageyama was continuously buying him out of, and shuddered. Better safe than sorry.)

“Nothing’s impossible,” Ukai said neutrally, and smoothly redirected the conversation by asking, “Do you have any siblings?”

He was banking on the fact that Sawamura did. Anyone whose protective instincts were so finely honed that they could catch Nishinoya mid-tumble from the upper balcony had to have at least a brother or two. 

“Four,” Sawamura said, “All younger.”

Ukai choked on an inhale, sputtering smoke into the night. 

“Yeah,” Sawamura said, sounding resigned. “I think that’s why I’m . . . like this.”

There was the faintest hint of guilt in his tone. He was still clearly upset with himself for falling asleep in the clubroom earlier, probably beating himself up for “failing” in his duties. They slowed to a stop in front of what Ukai assumed was Sawamura’s house, a single light burning in a downstairs window. The silhouette of a woman peered out at them—Sawamura’s mother, if Ukai had to guess, concerned about her son’s whereabouts and the late hour. 

“Like what?” Ukai asked, instinctively picking up on what Sawamura was implying. “Responsible? Assertive, or whatever? You want your friends to be okay, and you want them to do well. There’s no shame in that. It’s a good thing, that you care so much.”

Sawamura raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been told I’m intense.”

“So what?” Ukai scoffed. “Intense is the word used by unmotivated people to describe the motivated. Who said that to you? Forget about them.”

Sawamura’s second eyebrow joined the first in prodding at his hairline and Ukai grimaced, realizing that he’d been the one to come off as intense. “Just . . . relax, okay. You’re doing fine. You’re doing more than you have to. If you were any less the way you are, either Tanaka or Noya probably would’ve killed someone by now. Or Ennoshita. Kid doesn’t look like much, but he’s got those crazy eyes.”

“Yeah,” Sawamura said. He seemed to be standing just that much straighter.“Yeah, he does. Thanks, Coach. For walking me home. And for, well, everything.”

Ukai waved him off, turning to head back the way he came. “Next week,” he called over his shoulder. “In Takeda’s office. We’ll do the warmup lists, together. Don’t you try and start them beforehand.”

Sawamura flashed him a thumbs up and pulled his bag close to his chest before walking up the path to his house. If Ukai lingered just long enough to ensure the door closed firmly behind him, well. He was just ensuring that the person who composed seventy percent of the team’s impulse control got home safely. It was a form of self-preservation, really. No need to make a big deal out of anything, not even in his own head. 

Retracing his steps, Ukai shuffled the papers Sawamura had been drawing up under one arm. Composing the warmup lists himself would probably extend his weekly meetings with Takeda, and cut even further into his precious free time, but Ukai couldn’t really bring himself to care. What if Sawamura had passed out somewhere else instead of the clubroom? Somewhere unsafe, like the bus stop?

Gods. He should probably start making sleep schedules for the kids along with the diet plans, at this rate. He knew damn well Tsukishima at least wasn’t getting enough rest. The boy came into morning practice with eyebags the size of Russia. 

Yeah. He’d go home, eat some instant ramen, and start on those sleep schedules. And then, maybe, he’d think about pulling Sawamura aside one day and impressing upon him that he was fine the way he was, intensity and all. That he needed to start looking after himself, too, as well as trying to look after everyone else. After all, someone clearly had to do it, and Ukai found—well, he found that he didn’t mind if that someone was him. 

Chapter Text

     2. Sugawara Koushi

Sugawara Koushi was kind. 

That was the first thing Ukai noticed about him. It was in his eyes, in his smile, in the way he talked to his teammates. Sugawara was kind, and he was patient, and he had an incredible innate ability to bring out the best in other people—Ukai had, more than once, seen him turn a match around through sheer force of personality alone. With a mix of annoyance and grudging respect, Seijoh’s Oikawa Tooru had nicknamed him “Mr. Refreshing,” and Ukai couldn’t think of a better nickname for someone whose very presence felt like a cool drink after a hot day.

But for all his unwavering kindness, Ukai had learned—the hard way—that Sugawara was also a clever bastard with a sly wit and a mischievous streak a mile wide. His brilliant, guileless grin was normally just that—a smile that promised joy and comfort—but sometimes, it was a trap. A trap with teeth.

He was careful about it, though. Sugawara seemed to have a sense of his teammates’ limits, and never pushed anyone who couldn’t take it, and, on rare occasions, anyone who didn’t deserve it. Kageyama, for instance, was never treated to anything worse than a light kick and a mildly teasing comment. The poor kid didn’t hold up well under anything but the most benign of mockery, and Sugawara had adjusted accordingly. 

Azumane, though—Ukai often wondered what exactly Azumane had done to Sugawara to merit such ruthless teasing. According to an unfazed Sawamura, Sugawara had been terrorizing him since first year. However, Sugawara was also the first to jump in line to terrorize other players on other teams when they poked fun at Azumane’s anxiety at matches, something which Ukai was technically supposed to halt as his coach but often found himself turning a blind eye to instead. Sugawara’s barbed insults and petty little exchanges were funny .

In fact, the only difference between Tanaka and Noya’s particular brand of chaos and Sugawara’s was that Sugawara’s was infinitely smarter. Sugawara actually had a hold on his temper, and above all, he never got himself caught.

(Ukai knew—he knew —that it had been Sugawara who had somehow swiped his pack of cigarettes and replaced every one of them with a roll of Smarties. Neither Tanaka nor Noya had the imagination or the inclination. But somehow, during the hour that the switch had taken place, Sugawara had been either across the gym practicing serves or outside running laps with no less than three other people as witnesses. Absolutely brilliant. Equally infuriating.)

So when the phone rang at an ungodly hour of the morning and Ukai was informed that there was a kid down at the police station listing him as the emergency contact, Ukai wasn’t exactly surprised. He’d been expecting such a call since he’d realized during his first week coaching that while most members of the volleyball club were long on reckless determination, they were unfortunately short on any kind of common sense. He was only surprised that the kid in question was Sugawara.

Ukai rolled out of his futon, groping around in the dark for yesterday’s pair of pants. He’d been a little disgruntled, earlier in the night, that Takeda hadn’t stayed over; he was now glad for it. The teacher got little enough sleep as it was, and this sort of thing was probably best kept between Ukai and Sugawara. Takeda’s quiet disappointment could classify as a deadly weapon. 

Shoving a headband on to contain his bangs, Ukai shuffled out of the backroom behind the shop and opened the side door that let out onto the street. He picked up his jacket and shoes as he went, hoping that Sugawara hadn’t done anything too drastic. The team would be in trouble if their second setter and star motivator was rotting away in jail for arson, or whatever it was the kids were into these days. 

The drive to the police station was twenty minutes; Ukai made it in fifteen, leaving his truck in the parking lot with the engine still running. The officer manning the front desk looked up at him with detached apathy, spinning a pen lazily in between her first two fingers.

“Name?” she drawled. 

“Ukai Keishin,” Ukai said, trying not to squint against the sudden brightness of the interior of the station. 

“Oh.” Her expression eased, and she gestured over one shoulder. “He’s yours, then?”

Glancing past her, Ukai caught sight of a disheveled Sugawara sitting in one of the plastic chairs that lined the waiting room, looking put out and angry, but also mostly like a teenager who was struggling not to fall asleep where he sat.

Ukai sighed. It was too much work to explain that he was actually Sugawara’s volleyball coach, not his parent or another relative, so he simply settled with, “Yeah. He’s mine.”

“Good, good.” She shoved a file of papers across the desk at him. “Sign these, and you’re both free to go.”

Ukai yanked a pen out of his jacket pocket, scrawling his name on the dotted line. “So he’s not—he didn’t, uh, do—”

“There was an incident,” she shrugged. “But your boy was cleared of any charges.”

Pressing his lips together in satisfaction—he really hadn’t wanted to spend last week’s paycheck on bail—Ukai slipped past her and into the waiting room, nudging Sugawara gently in the leg with one sandaled foot. “Hey. Time to go.”

Sugawara’s head jerked up, his eyes flashing with naked relief when he saw it was Ukai standing above him. “Oh! Hi, Coach.”

Sugawara stood, wobbling a little, and Ukai took advantage of his brief disorientation to slip the schoolbag Sugawara was still holding out of his hands and onto his own shoulder.

Sugawara reached for it, protesting. “Hey, wait, I can—”

“You,” Ukai cut across him, not unkindly, “can explain to me what you’re doing here.” He steered Sugawara gently toward the door, exchanging a nod with the desk officer on their way out. Sugawara shivered slightly when they emerged into the cool night air, and Ukai internally praised his own foresight in leaving the truck running. He tossed Sugawara’s bag in the back and waited until the teenager had buckled himself into the passenger seat before demanding, “So? Out with it, kid.”

Sugawara sighed, slumping in his seat. The small tuft of silver hair that often stood straight from the crown of his head had wilted, giving him a weary look. Ukai resisted the absurd urge to tug it back into its proper position. “One of my classmates was absent today and the teacher asked me to drop her work off at home because we’ve been partners for projects in the past. I did, after practice, but then I got lost on the way back, and—it was dark, by the time I got myself straightened out. I didn’t see what was happening at first, but there was this girl, and two guys, and she was drunk and saying no but they weren’t backing off and there was no one else around, so—”

His tone grew exasperated, his lips screwing up into a small pout. “Except someone must’ve heard us, because the police showed up and arrested all four of us even though I didn’t even do anything.”

Ukai raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t do anything, huh?”

Catching the dryness of his tone, Sugawara flushed, going red from the tips of his ears down to his collarbone. “Well, I mean, I might’ve—nothing serious, just a couple light kicks—”

Ukai had seen one of Sugawara’s “light kicks” leave Tanaka gasping on the floor for five straight minutes. “Huh. Good for you.”

“Good for—” Sugawara spluttered, looking so thoroughly shocked that Ukai had to bite his lips to hide a smile. “Aren’t you gonna, like, scold me?”

“No,” Ukai said, throwing the gearshift into reverse and pulling out of the station. “Not if you won.”

He was hardly in a position to criticize, given the scraps he’d gotten into as a teenager. In fact, he still had the scar on his elbow from that time he’d duked it out with a kid from the basketball team over the nasty name he’d called Shimada and the bastard had shoved him through a window. 

Besides, scolding was hardly an effective tool against Sugawara, who often seemed to view verbal sparring as an entertaining diversion before the actual sparring took place.

Sugawara scoffed, sniffing. “Of course I won, Coach. Not all by myself, though,” he added thoughtfully, cocking his head to the side. “That girl had a hell of a right hook.”

Ukai grunted. “Yeah, they tend to. Anyway, where am I dropping you?” 

Sugawara suddenly seemed to shrink in his seat, guilt crumpling his expression. “Ah—anywhere’s fine, really—I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“It’s fine,” Ukai said. “Uh. Your parents?”

“Business trip in Osaka,” Sugawara said quietly, staring down at his lap. “I called, but neither of them picked up. That officer at the desk said I could stay at the station until morning, but—”

“It’s fine,” Ukai said, a little more strongly. It was hard not to take notice of whose family showed up in the stands at their matches, and whose did not. He was on speaking terms with Daichi’s parents, with the sprawling cast of Ennoshita’s cousins, and with Noya’s older sisters (all three of whom were equally short and loud), but he’d never so much as seen a hair of either of the Sugawaras. 

But it was one thing, Ukai thought, to disregard your son’s hobbies; and quite another to leave him stranded at a police station in the middle of the night after he’d gotten in a fight with two thugs. Gods. He should probably start microchipping these kids, if only for his own peace of mind. 

“Home?” he prompted Sugawara, who started briefly before giving out the directions in a subdued voice. When Ukai pulled into the driveway, all the lights in the house were off, and Sugawara thanked him profusely before reaching to open the passenger side door.

Ukai leaned over him to pull it closed again. “Hold on, kid. Let me see your hands.”

Sugawara’s eyes narrowed, even while his smile spread wider, grew sweeter. “Oh, no need for that, Coach. It’s late, I woke you up, you must be tired—”

“Sugawara,” Ukai said pointedly. It had not escaped his notice that Sugawara had kept his hands buried in his jacket pockets during the whole ride; his setter’s hands, which he maintained with such militant care. 

Sugawara’s eyes slid away from his in defeat, and he pulled his hands from his pockets to bare them for Ukai’s inspection. Ukai winced, glancing down at the bruises blooming on Sugawara’s knuckles, the flesh turning mottled and swollen. 

“It’s fine,” Sugawara said with a light laugh and a wave. “I’ll wrap them, don’t worry.”

Ukai blew out a breath. “Not alone, you won’t.”

“Coach—”

“Don’t be stupid, Sugawara. How many times have you told the underclassmen not to try and tape their own fingers?”

Sugawara pouted, but his silence was answer enough. 

“Do you have a first aid kit?”

“Yes,” Sugawara said, and hesitated. “But we’ll have to be quiet. My little brother’s supposed to be asleep by now.”

Ukai nodded, sliding out of the driver’s seat and taking Sugawara’s bag from the back before the other boy had a chance. Sugawara eased the front door open using a key he’d plucked from underneath a plant pot and then disappeared upstairs. Ukai waited in the kitchen, unable to help noticing that every framed photo displayed was only of the elder two Sugawaras. Looking at the pictures, he never would’ve guessed the couple had a son, let alone two. 

There was a reason, probably, that Sugawara came to every practice with a beaming grin and a predilection for taking care of his teammates. He’d most likely been doing it for his younger brother—and himself—far longer than he should've had to. Ukai’s heart twisted once in his chest. Sugawara was a kid. He should’ve been allowed the chance to just be a kid. 

Sugawara slipped back down the stairs and Ukai stepped away from the photos, settling at the kitchen table across from him. It took little time for Ukai to clean and disinfect Sugawara’s hands, careful not to pull too tight when wrapping the gauze. Sugawara remained silent during the entire procedure. The only sign of his discomfort was the way his teeth dug into his lower lip.

“Take it easy at practice tomorrow,” Ukai commanded, flexing Sugawara’s fingers one by one to check for range of motion. “You can’t risk further injury.”

Sugawara frowned. “But, Coach, Interhigh is—”

Ukai rolled his eyes, exasperated. His team’s singleminded dedication to volleyball was by turns incredibly inspiring and incredibly irritating. “I don’t care about Interhigh right now. I care about you. And you—you did a good thing. You know that, right? You did a good thing.”

Sugawara blushed, his hand tensing in between Ukai’s. “It was the right thing. Anyone would’ve done the same.”

“No,” Ukai said. “They wouldn’t have.” He waited until Sugawara met his eyes and then leaned forward and flicked him on the forehead. “But no more fucking fighting, alright?”

Sugawara yelped, but the corners of his mouth turned up. “No promises, Coach.”

“Little shit,” Ukai said fondly, and stood. He was touched, a little, that he was the person Sugawara had thought to call after he couldn’t reach his parents. It was proof that Ukai was slowly but surely gaining the team’s trust. “Go to bed.”

“I will, I will,” Sugawara said, and then shocked him by darting in for a quick, hard hug. There was no time for Ukai to hug back, only to watch as Sugawara vanished up the stairs again with the first aid kit. Shaking his head, Ukai let himself out, being careful to close the door quietly behind him. 

Sugawara could look after himself, that much was clear. But maybe—maybe Ukai would start offering him a ride home after practice, every once in a while. Just to make sure that Sugawara knew that just because he could look after himself, didn’t mean he always had to. 

After all, Ukai had always sort of liked the idea of being an older brother. 

Chapter Text

     3. Shimizu Kiyoko

Shimizu Kiyoko had the patience of a saint. 

There was no other earthly explanation for the way she’d managed to maintain her sanity in the face of the crew of monsters that liked to call itself the Karasuno Men’s VBC for three straight years—Ukai, only a few months in, could already feel himself slipping. 

An outside observer to the sport of volleyball might claim that it was the players themselves who were most responsible for the team’s functionality. A slightly wiser observer might include the faculty advisor and coach in that tally. The wisest of observers, however—the wisest among them made sure not to forget the managers. At this point, Ukai was willing to cede accountability for at least 21% of the club’s general operation to Shimizu, which was a rather heavy burden for one seventeen year old girl to bear on her rather slim shoulders.

Shimizu, of course, bore that burden easily, and looked as perfectly unbothered as always while doing it. If she wasn’t refilling water bottles and ensuring Narita didn’t pass out from dehydration again, she was liaising with the managers of other teams and trying to arrange practice matches. If she wasn’t keeping detailed and intensive notes on every player’s performance and statistics, she was gently reassuring Hinata and Yamaguchi that, no , the bus would not leave without them, and whoever had told them that was gravely misinformed. 

And on top of all the administrative duties that she performed, Shimizu had a true and genuine bond with each and every player. She didn’t speak much, but she didn’t have to—her actions spoke for her. 

She also had a mean underhand serve, one that Ukai was dying to know where she learned it from, but that could perhaps wait until she seemed slightly less tense around him. Having functioned without a coach for so long, Shimizu seemed to be harboring the notion that Ukai was going to fire her from doing some of the jobs that normally fell into the coach’s purview. In reality, that was the absolute last thing Ukai felt like doing. He was more than aware of how much Shimizu seemed to treasure some of her tasks, and also more than aware that his own in-game notes left something to be desired. 

(Probably multiple somethings, if he was being honest with himself.) 

As Ukai valued both Shimizu’s in-game notes and her rare spoken input, he was doing his best not to scare her off. Which was why, on the matter of asking after the underhand serve, he was taking a page out of her book, and being patient. 

In fact, Shimizu’s unworldly and possibly angelic ability to remain calm even in the most bizarre of situations seemed to be a hallmark of her character—so when even her legendary patience began to deplete, leaving her fidgeting in her seat, Ukai decided it was high time for a break. They’d been on the road for four straight hours already, traveling to a retreat high in the mountains where they’d spend a weekend at a training camp with Aobajohsai. 

Glancing at the near-empty gas tank, Ukai guided the bus to the nearest exit and pulled to a slow stop at a small gas station boasting a handful of pumps and a cramped store. A quick survey of the bus revealed that approximately half the team was awake, the other half obliviously slumbering on. 

Sawamura, thankfully, was alert, and Ukai passed him fifty thousand yen with instructions to ask the cashier to put it on Pump 3. Of course, if he was going inside, then the rest of the cognizant team members decided they were going as well. Ukai cranked the doors open for them, making sure to confiscate the extra money Tanaka tried to sneak along.

“No,” Ukai said sternly, reaching over and tucking the bills into the bag he’d brought along solely for confiscation purposes. Along with the money, it now contained  Noya’s PSP (he’d thrown it at Kinoshita’s head after losing a round), Sugawara’s pocketknife (there were innumerable reasons why allowing Sugawara to have a knife was a terrible idea) and Yachi’s planner (she’d been fretting over it so much Ukai had worried it was going to send her into a comatose state). “No more snacks. Eat some fruit, for gods’ sakes. You’re going to get scurvy.” He’d just seen Tanaka chew his way through an entire family-sized bag of cheetos. 

Tanaka whined, but got off the bus with no further complaints. Hinata, stumbling half-awake after him, missed a step and would’ve fallen if Ennoshita hadn’t caught him by the back of his jacket and set him to rights. The last person to depart was Shimizu, who took a moment simply to stand in the fresh air and breathe in a deep inhale. 

Ukai walked around to the side of the bus and primed the pump. It lit up, meaning that Daichi had successfully managed to interact with the cashier. He could see the boys inside the store through the front window—most of them wandering the aisles while Hinata disappeared, presumably to go to the bathroom. 

The first person to exit the shop was Shimizu, pushing the door open with a ring of the bell that was pinned to the top of the doorframe. A few more cars had pulled into the lot while the boys waited inside, meaning she had to walk back past a minivan stuffed with three toddlers and dead-eyed father, and a truck with a couple of young men lounging on the open bed. 

It was unseasonably warm out, and in deference to the temperature, Shimizu had left her team jacket on the bus. Her arms were bare, her upper body clad in only the thin white tee shirt worn under the jacket. Ukai saw the exact moment the leering youths in the truck noticed; and also saw the exact moment Shimizu noticed that she was being noticed. 

Her steps didn’t falter; didn’t slow or speed. The only sign of her sudden discomfort was the way one hand rose to untuck the piece of hair she’d folded behind one ear, letting it fall like a curtain to shield her face. 

The gesture, however, was ignored by the young men in the truck. One of them leaned over the edge of the truck bed with a lecherous whistle, and the other slung himself over the side entirely, landing on the asphalt of the parking lot. 

“Hey, lady,” he said, with an edge to his grin that made Ukai hurriedly slam the pump back onto its rack. “You’re lookin’ real nice. Give me your number, and I’ll show you a good time.”

Shimizu sidestepped him with a polite shake of her head. He wasn’t satisfied, however—going so far as to dodge back into her way, holding up his hands in a manner that was probably supposed to be placating, but instead came off as threatening. “Oh, come on,” he complained. “Not even a ‘hello’?” 

Shimizu ducked her head silently, hands clenching into tense fists at her sides, and the man’s smile twisted into something ugly. “What, am I not good enough for you?”

“Hey,” Ukai barked, already halfway across the lot. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Of course, they all already knew what was going on—it was harassment, plain and simple. Shimizu wasn’t interested. She was also a minor, a fact Ukai intended to get through the young man’s skull if he had to beat it into him.

They both turned to look at him. Shimizu wasn’t the most expressive of individuals, and Ukai was far from emotionally intelligent, but even he was able to read the relief in the way her shoulders loosened. He extended an inviting arm and she hurried to duck behind it, staring at the young men from over his shoulder. Her face was flushed; whether from shame or anger, he couldn’t tell.

“Hey,” said the first man, with an uneasy smile. “You her pops? Didn’t mean anything by it. She’s just real beautiful.”

Ukai felt his lip curl into a sneer. No, men like him never ‘meant anything by it,’ at least not until they thought they could get away with speaking as they liked and doing worse. He took a step closer, into the other man’s space. 

“Get back in your truck,” Ukai said, letting every ounce of his days as a high school delinquent bleed out in his voice. He made pointed eye contact with the other youth, who’d frozen still as if in hopes that Ukai wouldn’t see him. “And shut your fucking mouth before I knock your teeth out for talking to a child like that.”

The first man paled. “Hey man, I didn’t know she was a kid—”

“You knew she wasn’t interested.” Ukai overrode him, hotly, with something close to a snarl. He stammered out an excuse, but Ukai didn’t move until they’d both climbed back into the vehicle and the truck had sputtered away. 

“Assholes,” Ukai grunted. He checked first to ensure none of the boys had come out of the store yet and seen what had occured—the last thing he needed right now was for a half dozen of his players to go tearing out onto the highway vowing vengeance. Assured that they were all still inside waiting on Hinata, Ukai turned back to Shimizu. 

Her face was still flushed, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Arms crossed protectively over her chest, her bare arms prickled with gooseflesh despite the warmer temperature. Ukai sighed, and unzipped the light windbreaker he wore over his tank top. He moved to lay it over her shoulders, waiting until she’d drawn the edges together with shaking fingers to let go. 

Ukai opened and closed his mouth several times, before settling on, “People should learn how to keep their eyes in their damn skulls,” because it had been them , not her, who’d been in the wrong, and he wasn’t sure she understood that. 

She nodded, once, face still turned downwards. Ukai almost put his hand on her shoulder to reassure her, but drew it back after watching the way she leaned away from him, just slightly. They walked back to the bus together, but she didn’t open the door and get on. Instead, she leaned against the side of the vehicle, taking her glasses off with one hand.

With a sudden shock, Ukai realized she was crying. Silently, politely, tears dripping from her eyes and splashing onto the windbreaker’s collar.

“Aw, hell,” Ukai said. He’d never done well with crying. He wished Takeda were here, instead of asleep in the front seat of the bus. Takeda was excellent with crying. “Uh, do you want a—” He pawed through his pants pocket in search of a napkin or something, but only succeeded in fishing out a pack of cigarettes, some gum, and the protein bar he’d intended to have for a snack later. He tucked the cigarettes away and offered her the gum and the protein bar. 

After a moment, she took one of the sticks of gum, folding it between her fingers before slipping it into her mouth.

“Look,” Ukai said. “They were scum, okay? That sort of harassment is never acceptable—”

“It wasn’t that,” she said softly, pulling the windbreaker closer around her shoulders. “They were rude, but—I just wish someone would look at me and see me , for once.”

The reply stunned him for a moment—wasn’t people looking at her the whole issue in the first place? But then he thought a little harder, about being a girl in a world that often seemed to hate girls; about being a beautiful girl in a world that loved to hold beautiful girls up like idols or down like dirt, simply for the crime of being born beautiful.

Then he thought about Kiyoko’s drive, and her dedication, and her compassion, and her fierce loyalty to the people she cared about; and was abruptly furious. 

The first thing people noticed when looking at Azumane was his gentle air, or his barely-restrained anxiety. 

The first thing people noticed when looking at Shimizu was the color of her eyes or the set of her lips. Ukai had seen it, the way boys from other teams gazed at her covetously as if she were a prize to be won and not a living, breathing person with her own dreams and desires. 

Ukai bit his lip. There was nothing he could do to fix the various problems of the world, but—

“I see you,” he promised her, gruffly. “I know what you do for this team. I know they wouldn’t have made it anywhere without you.”

She looked up at him, twisting her fingers together. Her eyes swam with uncertainty. “My university counsellor told me I was crazy for continuing to be a manager in my third year. He thinks I should focus more on my studies. And . . . and my parents don’t understand why I dedicate so much of my time to a sport I don’t even play. They think it’s a waste.”

Ukai leaned back against the bus, tilting his chin up to look at the flock of crows wheeling overhead. Two of the birds briefly separated from the rest of the murder, squabbling over a tidbit one of them had clutched in its beak. 

“It might be crazy,” he conceded with a laugh. “Who knows? The whole damn team’s crazy. But do you like what you’re doing? Does it make you happy?” 

They were the questions he’d asked himself, after making the decision to commit to coaching as a full-time job. He found himself quite satisfied with the answers.

Her small, answering smile was like watching a flower bloom, like watching the sun’s first rays creep over the horizon. It made her face something beyond lovely, more than beautiful. It lit her from within. “Yes,” she said. “This is what I’ve always wanted to do—and the team are my best friends.”

Ukai shrugged. “Well that’s that, then.” It was the only answer that mattered, in the grand scheme of things. 

“That’s that,” she echoed softly, and shrugged off his windbreaker. “Thank you, Coach. For chasing off those guys.”

Ukai waved one hand in front of his face, accepting the windbreaker with the other. He was secretly pleased by how that interaction had turned out; he hadn’t even had to throw a punch. Seemed like he still had some of his old swagger, after all. “Eh, it was nothing. Young punks like that aren’t much of a threat. All you need is a little bark, not much bite.”

She tilted her head, slipping her glasses back on. “If they’re young punks, what does that make you? A middle-aged punk?”

The question was posed with such straight-faced innocence that it took Ukai a beat to realize that he’d just been mocked. “You—” he started, flabbergasted, but was interrupted by a bloodcurdling shriek that he unfortunately was able to identify as Hinata’s due to sheer familiarity. 

Whipping his head around, Ukai caught sight of approximately half the team barrelling toward him without any regard for traffic laws, passerby, or each other, presumably trying to race back to the bus. 

“STOP THAT,” he roared, at the same time that Sawamura slapped a hand over Tanaka’s chest, yelling at him to slow down. “Oh, for the love of—”

Ukai sighed, and turned back to Shimizu. “I know you said they’re your best friends. But surely we could leave a few of them behind?”

She had the audacity to giggle at him, as if the suggestion wasn’t a perfectly rational solution to the headache he could already feel brewing. “You wouldn’t leave anyone behind, Coach.”

And no, he really wouldn’t. His boys were annoying as fuck, but the bus ride would be boring without one of them trying to strangle another with the cord to his headphones, or whatever it was the second years got up to when they thought he wasn’t looking. 

Shimizu climbed onto the bus without looking back, neatly evading the horde of teenage boys stampeding closer. Her shoulders had straightened beneath her tee shirt. 

When she said he wouldn’t leave anyone behind, he hoped she understood that included her, too. Manager or not, she was an integral part of the team. He saw that clear as day. Maybe she couldn’t see it yet herself, but—Ukai had months ahead of him as a coach. Nothing but time to impress upon her her own importance. Nothing but time to help her see.

Chapter Text

     4. Azumane Asahi

Azumane Asahi was a study in contradictions. 

As fierce on the court as he was timid off of it, Azumane was the subject of many a town rumor, ranging from those that claimed he was actually a twenty two year old who’d been held back five times, to those that alleged that he was a member of the yakuza and had beat up another student in the parking lot once.

Upon first glance, Ukai had thought there might be some substance to those rumors. Azumane was big, after all, with the beginnings of a beard and shoulders wider than Ukai’s own. 

Then Ukai had seen Azumane startle and leap aside when a squirrel crossed his path during laps, and decided there wasn’t any truth to those rumors. Azumane’s face, which some whispered was set in a permanent scowl of fury, was in truth set in a permanent anxiety-inspired grimace. It just so happened that, on a man who was Azumane’s size, anxiety tended to look a lot like anger. 

But for all his uncertainty regarding his day-to-day life, Azumane didn’t falter on the court. He was the ace, in every sense of the word. The player with the most sheer attacking power, capable of blasting past even the most intimidating of blocks. 

His confidence now, halfway through the season, was heads and shoulders above what it had been when Ukai had first met him. Ukai knew about his struggles with Dateko’s Iron Wall—that he’d even quit the club after being shut out one too many times. But the quitting wasn’t the important part; the rejoining was. Everyone got knocked down at some point in their lives. The measure of a person laid in what they chose to do afterwards. 

Azumane had chosen to get back up again. (It made Ukai wonder, a little bitterly, about his own choices in high school. About how much getting up again cost a person, and whether it was worth it in the end.)

Ukai understood that it had taken time, and no small amount of persuasion from Azumane’s fellow third years. Being exasperatingly well-acquainted with both Sawamura’s sheer bullheadedness and Sugawara’s capacity for mischief, he almost felt sorry for the high-strung ace. He could imagine the two of them ambushing him at all hours of the day; persuading, needling, pushing .

Whatever they’d done, however, it had worked. Azumane had rejoined the team and promptly doubled Karasuno’s offensive ability. 

Though, Ukai somewhat doubted that it had only been Sawamura’s and Sugawara’s joint harassment that had made Azumane’s decision. Azumane could choose for himself.

There was also the matter of the way in which Azumane looked at Nishinoya.

It was a way of looking that most closely resembled Not Looking, for Azumane would stare at the back of Nishinoya’s head until the other boy turned around, at which point Azumane would wrench his gaze away and pretend to be greatly interested in something happening on the other side of the court. 

Ukai was beginning to get whiplash just from watching him. But at the same time, he couldn’t stop watching; firstly because there was a softness to Azumane’s gaze that plucked at Ukai’s heartstrings, and secondly because Azumane in looking and then Not Looking at Nishinoya was not actually paying much attention to the court. Ukai’d had to yell at him to duck a stray ball three times already.

Ukai blew the whistle that signaled the end of practice, interrupting yet another of Azumane’s lovesick staring sessions. The boys crowded around him immediately, squawking out questions and demands and pleas for meatbuns, please Coach I’m so hungry pleaaaaase, if I don’t eat meatbuns right this moment I’m going to DIE, you don’t want me to DIE Coach, do you? and Ukai yelled at them to go get changed and afterwards they’d all walk to the shop together.

“Impossible brats,” he said to Takeda, who had on that small smile that suggested he knew more than you did, and stormed into the coach’s office to grab some paperwork. 

Except there was no peace anywhere , because Ukai had only just been able to light his first cigarette when there was a knock at the door. Ukai stubbed out the cigarette, and groaned, and told whoever it was on the other side of the door to come in.

“Uh, hi Coach,” said Azumane, sidling in the doorway. “Can I ask you a question?”

You already did , Ukai bit back, and said, “Yeah, go ahead.”

“So,” Azumane said, and shuffled his feet. “If. I mean. Hypothetically speaking . . . people are . . . nice. And cute. And energetic and passionate and really cool. And if there was, um, one specific person who was nice and cute and cool, and I really liked them, uh—”

“Yes?” said Ukai.

“I would very much like to ask someone on a date but I don’t know how to do it,” Azumane said very quickly, and hid his face in his hands.

“Okay,” said Ukai blankly. “That’s great, kid. But why are you asking me for help?”

“Well, um, you’re dating Sensei, aren’t you? Surely you must have some advice . . .”

Ukai’s jaw hinged open. “How did you—I mean, why would you think—” He felt the flush travel up his neck. He and Takeda had been so careful; never exchanging even the barest of touches while the kids were around, being sure to depart the gym in opposite directions after evening practice had ended and then circling around to meet back up.

“Ah.” Azumane cringed. “You guys aren’t exactly . . . subtle? Like, you look at each other all lovey and stuff. . .”

“The way you look at Nishinoya?” Ukai asked, before he could stop himself.

It was Azumane’s turn to freeze.

“Sorry,” said Ukai. “But you’re not subtle, either.”

Azumane deflated. “I guess not,” he mumbled. “But I just like him so much and I don’t know what to do .”

“Have you tried telling him how you feel?” said Ukai, because Takeda was forever reproaching him about being emotionally available and honest about his feelings, and he figured Takeda’s advice was always good advice.

“I can’t just tell him,” Azumane cried, wringing his hands together. “It has to be special! Noya deserves for it to be special.”

“Okay,” Ukai said, and searched the deepest recesses of his brain for what might constitute as “special” to two highschool volleyball players. “How about chocolate?”

“He’s allergic.”

“A nice dinner?” Ukai hazarded. It was what he and Takeda did when they felt like being special . 

“Yuu wouldn’t like that.”

“You’re probably right.” Ukai tried to imagine Nishinoya in any sort of formal wear at any sort of fancy restaurant, and promptly shuddered. “Alright. How about flowers, then?”

“Flowers?” Azumane seemed caught on the idea, his hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck. “I think that’d be really nice . . .”

“Good,” said Ukai. “Great. So that’s settled. Buy him some flowers, and ask him to go out with you.”

“Right!” Azumane said, seemingly trying to talk himself up, but then paled. “But Coach, I don’t know how to pick out flowers! There are so many, and they all mean different things. What if I accidentally give him a flower that means I hate you or something like that?”

Ukai stared at him. “You’re not going to give him a flower that means I hate you .”

“I might! What if I grab the wrong one, and—”

“Okay!” Ukai interrupted, raising a hand. His plans for the evening—which included a big bottle of sake and a new episode of his favorite J-drama—vanished like evening mist, but he couldn’t bring himself to be that upset about it. He was, despite himself, invested in making sure that Azumane got his man and did not accidentally convey an elaborate message of hate through a poorly constructed bouquet. Though, to tell the truth, Ukai was fairly sure Nishinoya had no idea what the language of flowers even was, and was almost certainly not able to read it. It was the thought that counted.

“My shop sells flowers,” Ukai said. “Later tonight, after everyone else has left, you can stay behind and we’ll pick some out together. Alright?”

Azumane brightened. “Thanks so much, Coach!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ukai said. “Now get back out there and tell Tanaka that if he tries to buy one of those vape pens again I’m banning him for life.”

Azumane nodded and departed, and Ukai dragged himself up from his chair. Paperwork in hand, he made sure to discard the cigarette before leaving. He emerged from the office and the boys swarmed him once again, yammering on about this and that. Ukai gently swatted a couple of them with his sheaf of papers, prompting exaggerated yowls and retaliatory pinches. 

“Let’s go,” he scolded, feeling as if he were trying to herd a group of squabbling crows. “Come on . Some of you have curfews.”

He got them into gear; or rather, Takeda did, and Ukai slipped behind the shop’s register once they all arrived. Sawamura tried to pay for the meatbuns himself, as he always did, and Ukai refused, as he always did. Later, Ukai would find a few thousand yen tucked discreetly away on a shop shelf, and the next day, Sawamura would find that same few thousand yen mysteriously placed back into his sports bag. It was an old ritual at this point. 

The kids left in twos and threes, juggling hot meatbuns from hand to hand and shouting goodbyes. Takeda lingered, granted him a swift kiss when the coast was clear, and promised to meet Ukai tomorrow for a picnic date. Ukai found himself smiling dumbly as the teacher left, and had to quickly rearrange his face back into a neutral scowl when Azumane poked his head nervously around one of the aisles. 

“Coach?”

“Coming,” Ukai said gruffly, trying to will away the color staining his cheeks. He was twenty-fucking-six; ridiculous that just a chaste brush of lips could reduce him to a blushing mess.

Ukai led Azumane up to the front of the shop, near the wide windows which glowed with sunlight during the day. The flowers were kept on the floor in small buckets half-filled with water. They were fresh, having been dropped off just that morning. 

“How about, uh—” Ukai squinted at the webpage he’d pulled up earlier at the register— “a red carnation, for love and pride?”

A flower symbolizing pride, Ukai felt, would be an especially apt gift for Nishinoya. Noya oozed pride; pride in himself, in his teammates, in his position as a libero. Azumane seemed to agree, for his eyes brightened even as he twisted his hands together nervously. 

“Yeah! Is there—I don’t suppose there’s a flower that means, um, constancy? Or, like, dependability or something . . .”

They pieced the bouquet together slowly, spending long minutes agonizing over flower color and the composition of the arrangement as a whole, eventually arriving at something that Azumane found satisfactory. Found beautiful, if the small smile on his face was anything to go by. Ukai dusted his hands off with a grunt, feeling like maybe he should’ve become a florist. Surely it would be less likely to cause premature graying than coaching. 

“How much?” Azumane asked, digging in his pockets, and Ukai shook his head.

“Nothing. Just tell me how it pans out, okay, kid?”

Azumane shuffled his feet, dropping his gaze to the floor. The bouquet, cradled so carefully in his large hands, looked somewhat like a child’s toy. “You think I even have a chance? Noya’s so cool, and I’m . . . well, I’m kind of a wimp.”

“Hey!” Ukai barked, poking him in the chest. He was not going to allow Azumane’s romantic aspirations to sputter out before they’d really even had the chance to kindle. “None of that! You’re the ace! You’re cool, too. Act like it!”

“But—”

“No buts! I want you to get out there tomorrow and ask him out like it’s match point in the third set!”

Azumane’s face filled with the familiar fire that only seemed to emerge during games, and he straightened, bellowing out a, “ Yes, Coach! ” before turning around and practically sprinting for the door. 

Ukai watched him go, shaking his head. Azumane wasn’t sure if Nishinoya would accept his advances, but Ukai was, because he knew something Azumane didn’t. See, Ukai hadn’t been the only one watching Azumane during practice. Nishinoya watched him too, with double the intensity and an undercurrent of frustrated longing. In fact, Ukai had been certain that it was going to be Nishinoya who would make the first move. He was beyond proud that Azumane had found within himself the courage and self-confidence to do so instead. 

Ukai turned back to the flowers, eyeing them warily. Flowers would be nice for a picnic date, right? Almost disbelieving himself, Ukai ensured that the front door was locked before beginning to put together his own bouquet. A hydrangea clipping, for perseverance, was the first bloom he selected.

He felt kind of stupid, shuffling the flowers together, but Azumane had been brave enough to do it, so Ukai told himself he had no excuse. Coaching children wasn’t just about telling them what to do; it was about showing them, too. He had no right to tell Azumane to be bold if he couldn’t do the same. 

Tomorrow, Ukai expected to see Azumane and Nishinoya walk into afternoon practice with clasped hands and matching grins. Nishinoya would almost certainly be bursting with excitement and crowing the news to anyone who would listen; Azumane would be quieter about it, but no less thrilled. Ukai would have to be ready, for Azumane to come to him with questions and concerns about his brand-new relationship, because Azumane had obviously identified him as someone who would take those concerns seriously. 

It was . . . gratifying, to be given that trust. 

Ukai twisted his bouquet this way and that, tucking a sprig of Queen Anne’s lace into the middle. Azumane had grown in leaps and bounds since the beginning of the season, his rebuilt confidence shining like a torch; paving the way for the rest of the team. He might falter again, Ukai knew—but it was of no matter. Azumane had already chosen once to stand back up when he’d fallen. And this time, Ukai would be right there beside him.

Chapter Text

     5. Kinoshita Hisashi

Kinoshita Hisashi was very good at making himself unnoticeable.

He didn’t speak much, and when he did, it was typically to make a pointed comment at Tanaka’s expense. When Ukai asked for volunteers for demonstrations, the boy somehow managed to fade into the background like a transparent pane of glass, deflecting any probing gazes away from himself with practiced efficiency. Even in situations where it shouldn’t have been conceivably possible for a boy of 175 centimeters to simply disappear—standing alone in the middle of the volleyball court, for example—Kinoshita’s slouched posture and air of slight preoccupation made him easy to miss.

Ukai, whose entire job description entailed close observation and a keen eye for detail, found even himself skipping over the boy with a frustrating regularity. Kinoshita never seemed to occupy the forefront of Ukai’s mind for very long; he slipped away from any sort of mental grasp like a stone sinking slowly beneath water. Ukai would promise to himself; he would swear ; today was the day he was going to pin Kinoshita down and have a real conversation about his jump floater serves—and then practice was somehow already over, and Ukai was left outside the gym realizing that Kinoshita had somehow evaded him yet again.

It took months for Ukai to realize Kinoshita was doing this on purpose.

It was not simple happenstance that every time Ukai began to approach Kinoshita he was distracted by something or another—it was strategy. Kinoshita would see Ukai coming out of the corner of his eye, and promptly relocate himself so that to get to him Ukai had to wade through one of Hinata and Kageyama’s twice-weekly spats where each of them tried his best to annihilate the other from the face of the planet, or Sawamura about to pop a blood vessel because Nishinoya had gotten another volleyball stuck in the ceiling, or Tsukishima looking approximately two seconds away from walking out of the gym, changing his legal name, and never coming back.

And then by the time Ukai sorted the current crisis, he had forgotten about Kinoshita entirely. A solid strategy, Ukai could admit, except that Ukai was onto him now. He informed Kinoshita in no uncertain terms that the next time Kinoshita tried to duck away from his attention, he would be spending the entirety of the next game on the bench directly next to Ukai, where Ukai could keep an eye on him at all times.

That solved the problem of Kinoshita avoiding him, though it seemed to generate a new, worse problem: Kinoshita didn’t actually like Ukai that much.

At first, Ukai thought the stiff way Kinoshita held himself around him was simply the way he stood. Maybe he didn’t make eye contact because he didn’t like looking people in the face in general. But he was fine with Narita, or Tanaka, or even Takeda , which meant that Kinoshita’s general disquiet around him was something that had to do with Ukai in particular.

Whatever it was that made Kinoshita uncomfortable around him, Ukai was determined to figure it out—he was the Coach; he was supposed to be a safe harbor and a secure presence, not someone to be ever-so-subtly flinched away from—but his efforts were complicated by the fact that Kinoshita showed up at his shop every weekend and stayed until closing.

Surely, someone who didn’t much like Ukai wouldn’t voluntarily seek him out? Granted, Kinoshita didn’t really interact with him (he mostly sat on the front stoop and did his homework) but it was still a contradictory piece of the puzzle that Ukai was vainly trying to assemble.

Today was a Saturday, and Kinoshita sat huddled on the front stoop as he usually did, frowning down at what seemed to be a Literature assignment. Ukai, as he usually did, was sitting at the shop counter and watching him from behind that week’s issue of shonen jump. Kinoshita shivered, and Ukai frowned. The sun had set and the temperature had dropped; Kinoshita was not wearing a jacket. By this time of night, Kinoshita had usually packed up his work and gone home. 

Ukai shoved himself out from behind the counter and crossed to the shop’s front door. He swung it open and poked his head out. “If you’re going to be here,” he said, “might as well come inside.”

Kinoshita startled and turned around to look up at him, training his gaze on Ukai’s left cheekbone. He gave a polite smile. “I’m alright, Coach.”

“I insist,” Ukai said pointedly. “Can’t have you catching cold before Nationals.”

Kinoshita hesitated, eyes flickering between Ukai’s face and his feet, before nodding. Ukai held the door open for him and dragged another chair out of the back room, setting it beside his stool behind the counter. Kinoshita took the seat gingerly, leaning as far away from Ukai as possible. Ukai tried not to let it bother him.

Ukai picked up his shonen jump again. He set it down. He turned, about to ask Kinoshita if he’d like some tea—perhaps some chamomile would help the boy be less painfully tense—and then he stopped. Kinoshita was wearing long sleeves, but he’d raised one hand to prop it under his chin, and the sleeve had fallen down his arm slightly. The concealer (for it was certainly concealer; Ukai had dated enough women to know that, at least) he’d applied had smeared, revealing a bruise wrapped around his wrist bone.

Ukai was familiar with bruises. Sawamura and Nishinoya in particular came away from every practice with fresh marks blooming along forearms and calves and stomachs. They did not, however, sport ugly, purple-red handprints around their wrists. 

Ukai stood again, and was careful not to touch Kinoshita when he slid out from behind the counter. He went to the door and flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. Outside, it was beginning to rain. 

When he’d first started coaching, Takeda had warned him about this—that there might one day come a time when Ukai encountered a child in need of support that went beyond tips on nutrition and help with receiving drills.

Ukai had accepted that fact, theoretically. He’d heard the horror stories. He hadn’t expected one of those horror stories to be unfolding right under his nose. 

It made a disturbing amount of sense. Kinoshita did not like adults’ attention; Kinoshita knew how to make himself small and unnoticeable and nonthreatening; Kinoshita spent his weekends on Ukai's front porch because he didn’t want to go home. Ukai could’ve kicked himself for not noticing earlier. For not asking.

He allowed himself to be blisteringly angry for all of ten seconds, counting down slowly in his head. Ukai worked with children; had spent months watching his kids grow and learn and crash and cry and pick themselves back up again. Children were fragile, vulnerable, precious things. They broke so easily. They needed sheltering—protection. Encouragement. Ukai was not sure he believed in gods, but he was certain there was a special place in hell for people who put their hands on children. 

Then Ukai took care to wipe every trace of rage from his face before he turned around, because Kinoshita must not be allowed to see it. Kinoshita must not be allowed to think that Ukai was angry with him . 

When Ukai returned to the counter, Kinoshita was watching him warily. Ukai wished Takeda were here. This was going to have to be handled delicately, and Ukai had never once been accused of delicacy. He was the proverbial bull in the china shop—but he was all Kinoshita had, at the moment. He would have to be enough.

“It’s getting late,” Ukai said casually, feeling his heartbeat in his throat. “And it’s raining. I’m not sure I want you walking around in that. You can stay here tonight, if you’d like.”

There was a flash of something in Kinoshita’s eyes—hope? dread?—but it was gone before Ukai could get a proper handle on it.

“Thanks, Coach,” Kinoshita murmured, beginning to pack away his Literature assignment. “But I don’t want to bother you.”

“It’s not a bother. I have a spare futon.”

No, his kids were never bothers, no matter how many times Ukai’d had to snap at them to stop trying to raise salamanders in the club room, or something else equally ridiculous. Kids did stupid shit. It was part of being a kid. It was part of being an adult, to handle that stupid shit with—if not grace and equanimity—then at least with nonviolence.

“I’m sure your parents won’t mind. Would they?”

Ukai needed to know now, if his keeping Kinoshita overnight was just liable to get the boy into more trouble. That was the last thing he wanted. 

“No,” Kinoshita said, with a small smile. “I don’t really think they care.”

Now that he was listening for it, it was easy to catch the double meaning in his words. Ukai closed his eyes very briefly and pictured Takeda; his nonthreatening posture and the light cadence of his voice. 

“Kinoshita. If there’s . . . if there’s something wrong, you know you can always come to me. Right?”

Again, that flash of something unnameable. “Of course, Coach. But I really should be getting home.”

“. . . Okay.” There was nothing Ukai could do to stop him, short of grabbing him. And Kinoshita already had bruises enough. Still, it was difficult to watch him go, knowing what he did now. He clenched his teeth and retreated to the back room, digging a cigarette irritably out of his pocket. 

What to do? Of course, something had to be done. Ukai didn’t have proof, but he did have a responsibility. Because hitting children was wrong; because Ukai happened to be fond of this particular child and found himself quite suddenly willing to do a great number of probably-illegal things to protect him. 

But those things would have to be done carefully, so as to not put Kinoshita at any further risk. In fact—

The shop door crashed open and Ukai jumped to his feet, cursing. He stomped back into the store with a reprimand on the tip of his tongue, until he saw who it was that had just stumbled into the shop.

Kinoshita was pale; dripping wet; shaking. His Literature homework was nowhere to be seen. “Please,” he said, and that was louder than Ukai had ever heard him speak. “Please don’t make me go home.”

“No,” said Ukai. “I won’t. I promise.” He extended a hand, intending to—well, he actually wasn’t quite sure what he intended to do—but the last thing he expected was for Kinoshita to stumble forward and wrap his arms around Ukai like he was drowning.

“Oh,” said Ukai, and rested one hand very carefully on the top of Kinoshita’s head. He was horribly awkward, and horribly stiff, but Kinoshita didn’t seem to care, apparently doing his level best to burrow into Ukai’s jacket.

“You look like my father,” Kinoshita whispered into his shoulder, and Ukai remembered every time Kinoshita had flinched away from him for no discernible reason. “But you. You’re not. You’re not like him at all.”

Ukai stood still, and let Kinoshita cling to him, even though rainwater was starting to soak into his clothes and onto the floor. He stroked his hand tentatively through the fine brown strands of Kinoshita’s hair, and waited for the shivering to abate.

“Um,” Kinoshita said, pulling away after several long minutes had passed. He’d gone red from his hairline down to his collar. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright. Here.” Ukai was careful not to turn his back on Kinoshita—he had the vague suspicion that the boy might disappear if Ukai took his eyes off him for even a second—and opened the closet at the back of the store. He fished out the smallest set of nightclothes he owned and passed them over. “You’re soaked through. You can go and change in the bathroom, and then we should probably both head to bed.”

Kinoshita stuttered out a thanks and disappeared. Ukai busied himself with hauling out the spare futon, laying it out neatly next to his own. The question now was how much to push: enough to get the information that he needed, not so much that he broke the fragile trust that Kinoshita had just extended to him. 

(Ukai knew courage; knew it by watching his kids claw their way to Nationals even after crushing defeats and broken dreams. There was bravery in Nishinoya’s unwavering defense and Kageyama’s determination to do better by his teammates, and even in Sugawara’s steely optimism on the bench. But there was courage in this, too: in looking at a man who reminded you of something terrible, and choosing to trust him anyway.)

Kinoshita re-emerged from the bathroom and Ukai whisked his dripping clothing away before he could protest, laying it in the sink to be taken care of in the morning. When he returned to the backroom, he found that Kinoshita had already curled up on his futon. He was facing away from the door, but Ukai could see the white-edged ridges of his knuckles where he was clutching onto his blankets. 

Ukai switched off the light and settled down, staring into the blackness above him.

“Kinoshita. You can stay here until—until whenever, I suppose. We’ll find a way to get your things. I have the space.”

“You know.”

Not a question.

“I’ve guessed.”

Kinoshita spoke in stops and starts, whispering the story out into the waiting darkness. Ukai knew there were things Kinoshita was yet keeping from him—gaps in the tale that were tiptoed around as if through a minefield—but the picture Kinoshita’s words painted was sufficiently detailed that Ukai immediately understood that it was unacceptable for Kinoshita to spend even one more day in his parents’ house.

“I’m sorry,” Ukai said, after Kinoshita was finished. “That wasn’t right. Some people . . . some people shouldn’t be parents.”

There was a rustling noise, and Ukai saw the shadow of Kinoshita’s arm move against the deeper blackness. He’d turned on his side to face Ukai, curled up with his hands pillowed under his head. “Maybe, if I could’ve been better—”

“No,” Ukai said. “No. Don’t think for a moment that you deserved it.”

There was a line, between consequences and cruelty. Kinoshita’s parents had treated that line like a skipping rope. 

An indrawn breath that might have been a sob. “Coach, I—I don’t know what—”

“We’ll handle it,” Ukai promised. “I’ll help you. It’s just like—we’re a team, okay? We would never leave you behind on the court, either.”

“We,” said Kinoshita, as if it was a foreign word in his mouth. “Do you—do you have to tell anyone else?”

“I’d like to tell Takeda,” Ukai said carefully. “Or you can tell him, if you’d like. He’s good, at this sort of thing.”

“Okay,” Kinoshita said, after a long pause. “Okay.”

“But, for what it’s worth—I think, if you chose to tell the team, they’d understand. They’d support you.” 

Karasuno, after all, did not take loyalty lightly. His kids had faced scorn and ridicule from other teams long enough to understand the value of sticking together. Hinata, who was small, and Yamaguchi, who was shy and awkward, might have been easy targets at another school, in another team. Ukai had seen it happen in his own highschool years. Children who stuck out, who were different, were not treated kindly.

At Karasuno though, Hinata and Yamaguchi were safe. They were untouchable—because they had a team around them, and the third years had made it clear that anyone who picked on them would face the repercussions. The first years weren’t aware of what Sawamura and the others had done (though Tsukishima might have guessed), but Ukai was. He’d done it himself as a third year, looking out for his underclassmen in the only way he knew how.

That same level of loyalty, of protection, extended to Kinoshita as well. If Kinoshita chose to confide in his teammates, then they would rally around him, pull him into the heart of the murder to keep him safe.

“I know,” Kinoshita said softly, and Ukai was relieved that he at least understood that he had his friends at his back. “But I don’t want them to pity me.”

“They wouldn’t,” Ukai said, but he could tell by the quality of Kinoshita’s silence that the boy did not believe him. Oh, well. That could be something they would work on, in the coming weeks. “Just—get some sleep, okay? We’ll talk this over again in the morning.”

“Thanks, Coach,” Kinoshita said, curling up impossibly tighter. “I, um. I owe you one.”

“You owe me nothing,” Ukai said vehemently, and waited until Kinoshita’s breathing evened out to slide back out of his futon. He set himself up at the shop counter with a few fresh pieces of paper, a pen, and his phone open in front of him. There were legal complications to this sort of situation, he knew. Ukai might end up dealing with the police before the whole thing was sorted. Maybe a social worker. Maybe Kinoshita’s parents themselves, though Ukai wouldn’t mind that too much at all. He’d never had a tolerance for bullies. 

It was best to start preparing now, drawing up plans and back-up plans and back-up plans to the back-up plans. It was not unlike trying to piece together the strongest possible starting rotation, all the while taking into account the other team’s strengths as well as his own. 

Ukai would be beyond tired in the morning, but it was worth it. The adults in Kinoshita’s life had failed him, appallingly so, and Ukai refused to join their ranks. For whatever reason, Kinoshita had chosen him as a confidant, and Ukai was determined to live up to that implicit faith. 

Ukai listened to the soft rhythm of Kinoshita’s breathing behind him, and made a promise to himself. It was obvious that Kinoshita did not trust easily or often; that he had never viewed his house as a place of safety or comfort. Ukai’s shop wasn’t much in the way of appearances—there was a light out in the back, and the floor could be cleaner—but Ukai intended for Kinoshita to understand that he had a home here, that his doors were always open. 

It was the least he could do.

Chapter Text

6. Yachi Hitoka 

Yachi Hitoka gave everything her all. 

The first time Ukai had encountered her, it had been a very brief acquaintance—or rather, a very brief acquaintance with the back of her head as she sprinted away from him. He’d thought, for a bemused moment, that she was one of those fangirls that populated the stands during matches. Then she’d shown up at Shimizu’s side during the next practice, trembling from head to toe but undoubtedly still present, and Ukai had rapidly revised his opinion.

She’d proven herself invaluable more than once in the following months. Her posters had been the catalyst for an influx of donations to the volleyball club, allowing Ukai to take his team to training camps with powerhouse schools. At those training camps, Yachi had remained faithfully by Shimizu’s side, easing the burden on the other girl.

And then there was the way she interacted with the other first years. As a unit, the first years were easily the least cohesive group on the team. The third years were a tightly-knit, smoothly-operating body, each with their own distinctive roles. They supported each other; scolded each other; loved each other. The second years were slightly more chaotic, but were still obviously attached to one another by dint of time and affection.

The first years—well. If it wasn’t Hinata’s stubbornness causing friction, then it was Tsukishima’s abrasiveness, or Kageyama’s temper. The only one who could be half-trusted to not cause problems was Yamaguchi, and even he was prone to shocking and unpredictable bouts of strong emotion. 

This was not to say that the first years weren’t friends—Ukai knew very well that they were. Hinata, for one, was friends with everybody. Kageyama visibly, achingly, worked every practice to learn how to better communicate with his teammates. Yamaguchi spent a not-insignificant portion of his time running around after the other three snapping at them not to overwork themselves. Tsukishima had tried to hide it, but Ukai had seen him giving the others Christmas presents. 

Adding Yachi to the mix was like completing the final step of a chemical equation. Things . . . balanced. Yachi took her duties as a tutor seriously, and it was evident in Kageyama and Hinata’s improving grades. She genuinely seemed to celebrate every passing mark they received, to the point Ukai thought they were telling her about their academic achievements before they were telling their own parents. Yachi was also Yamaguchi’s confidante, and Tsukishima’s foil: she understood Yamaguchi’s struggles with anxiety, and was just lighthearted enough to counter some of Tsukishima’s cynicism. 

In fact, Yachi was wholeheartedly devoted to her fellow first years, and to the team in general; which was why Ukai couldn’t figure out why she kept leaving herself out of things. 

It had begun with the team jacket, as Yachi nervously proclaimed she didn’t really need one, honestly, especially if it was going to cost money and be such a hassle . . . 

Takeda had, of course, ordered the jacket anyway. 

But then Yachi had stammeringly excused herself from hangouts and birthday parties and even casual gatherings. Ukai, frowning, watched as she denied yet another invitation to a team sleepover, on account of “having too much homework.”

“Are you sure?” Sawamura asked, leaning over into a cooldown stretch. “You could always bring the work to Asahi’s place. We wouldn’t mind.”

Yachi squeezed a stray volleyball to her chest before placing it into the cart. “I—I’m sure, Captain! Um, not to say that you guys are loud , or anything, it’s just—”

“It’s just that we are loud, and incredibly distracting, and you would get nothing done,” Ennoshita sighed, absentmindedly collecting Tanaka’s water bottle off the floor and handing it to him just as he was beginning to turn around in search of it. 

Yachi flushed cherry red. “No! I mean, well—”

“It’s okay,” Tsukishima muttered. “Not like you’re missing much.”

“SALTYSHIMA DON’T LIE I KNOW YOU LIKE HANGING OUT WITH US,” Hinata howled, and looked as if he were gearing up to fight the other boy when Sugawara came bouncing in the gym doors swinging a set of keys around one finger.

It was a Friday night, which meant Ukai had cancelled morning practice the next day. Sawamura had taken advantage of the free time to organize a team bonding event—a sleepover—that would stretch from tonight into tomorrow afternoon. He’d even somehow convinced Azumane to host. Sugawara, as the oldest member of the team and also the only one with a license, had been designated the appointed driver.

“Van’s all warmed up,” Sugawara announced cheerfully, referring to the ten-seater Ford Transit that he’d gotten from some junk yard for cheap. Ukai had concerns about that vehicle, not the least of which was his persistent fear that the transmission would give out on some particularly twisty backroad and Sugawara would be sent to his death in what amounted to a glorified metal box.

Also, the van only seated ten, and there were thirteen sleepover attendees. Ukai pointed at Sugawara. “Do not strap anyone to the roof of that thing.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sugawara said, far too innocently. Ukai narrowed his eyes. 

“Shotgun!” Nishinoya screeched, rushing past with his bag. He’d spilled half of it all over the floor earlier, and Ukai had caught sight of a handful of gummy worms and a Beyblade. He’d also seen a lighter and something that looked suspiciously like a set of sparklers, but he was choosing to ignore that for his own peace of mind. 

Hinata and Kageyama didn’t even so much as glance at each other before taking off, and Sugawara followed them, hollering that it didn’t matter who got to the car first, he got to pick who got shotgun, and he was picking Kiyoko.

“I swear, if they try and stuff me in the trunk again . . .” Narita muttered, hot on their heels. The rest of the team was quick to follow, shouting rushed goodbyes to Ukai and Takeda. Ukai raised a hand in farewell, using the other to lock the gym behind him. The only straggler was Yachi, who gazed after the departing team with something like wistfulness in her eyes.

Takeda cleared his throat gently. “I’m sure they haven’t left yet. There’s still time if you’d like to join.”

Yachi startled, her hands coming up to pluck nervously at the straps to her backpack. “Oh, no! It’s fine! So much to do, you know.” She gave a quick, insincere smile, and darted around the side of the building.

Takeda sighed, readjusting his glasses to sit higher on his nose. “I worry about her.”

“You’re always worrying,” Ukai chided. “Take a night off.”

Takeda snorted, worming a hand into Ukai’s jacket pocket. “As if you’re one to talk.”

“I happen to worry the exact appropriate amount,” Ukai said. He slid his hand into his pocket and wound his fingers through Takeda’s. They set off for the parking lot at a leisurely pace, bumping shoulders every few steps. Once they’d passed behind Takeda’s car and out of sight from the school, Ukai pressed Takeda briefly against the driver's side door and kissed him. Takeda kissed him back in a slow slide of lips and tongue, nipping at Ukai’s mouth with surprisingly sharp teeth.

“See you later?” Takeda said hopefully once he’d pulled away.

Ukai took a moment to catch his breath, willing the blood to drain from his flushed cheeks. “My place or yours?”

Takeda hummed, reeling Ukai in by the belt loops for another kiss. “Definitely mine.”

Ukai lost the next few minutes to the hot sweetness of Takeda’s mouth, only coming back to his senses when the teacher slipped deftly out of his grasp and propped his door open, settling into his seat and peering out the window. “Later.”

“Yes,” Ukai said, knowing that Takeda could’ve asked for his very soul at that moment and Ukai would’ve handed it over gladly. They couldn’t be seen going home together, but they were still finding ways of making it work.

Takeda pulled away and Ukai took a brief moment to collect himself. He was opening the door to his own truck when he remembered, abruptly, that Yachi had taken a left around the corner of the gym instead of a right, which meant she’d been heading in the exact opposite direction from her bus stop.

Frowning, Ukai retraced his steps through the parking lot and rounded the gym. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find, but it wasn’t Yachi huddled up against the brick wall in a heart-wrenchingly small pile of pale limbs and blonde hair. She was crying in that particular way that some girls did, where every sob was perfectly contained behind compressed lips, as if to make the whole experience less bothersome. 

Ukai started forward on sheer instinct alone, and he must have made some noise that alerted her, because by the time he reached her side she’d already wiped the tears from her eyes and was attempting a wobbly smile.

“Yachi,” Ukai said, feeling something furious bubble up into the spaces between his ribs. “What— who —”

“It’s alright,” she said, sniffling. “It’s stupid, anyway. S—sorry.”

Ukai crouched down onto his heels so he was at a level with her and waited for her to look at him, gentling his tone as much as he could. “If you’re this upset about it,” he said logically, “then it’s not stupid.” 

Her mouth began to shake again, and it was barely warning enough for him to brace himself before she launched herself forward at him, arms wrapping around his waist in a vice grip. Her next sob came out silently but wrenchingly, and he felt her whole body tremble with the force of it. 

“Uh,” Ukai said, trying to rearrange himself into a sitting position. She was light but deceptively pointy , and he settled for letting himself rock backwards onto his butt. Yachi slumped against his chest with her face buried in his shoulder. “Are you . . . okay?”

“They hate me,” she wailed, the warmth of her tears soaking through his jacket and onto his shoulder. “I’m s—sure of it. Th—they’re just too n—nice to say so .”

Ukai frowned. Yachi was perhaps the least-hateable person he’d ever known. “Who hates you?”

“Everybody,” she said, picking her tear-stained face from off his shoulder and looking at him miserably. “The team.”

“The team,” Ukai said after a pause. “You think the team hates you?” 

She sniffled, eyes downcast. “They don’t n—need me. They have Kiyoko-san, and she’s so much b—better than I am, and all I ever do is get in the way—”

“That’s not true,” Ukai interrupted, more hotly than he’d intended. “Hey, what about those posters you designed?”

“Anybody could’ve done that.”

“But anybody didn’t. You did.”

“I—I guess so. But—”

“This is why you didn’t want to go to the sleepover,” Ukai realized. “Or Yamaguchi’s birthday party. Or the arcade last week.”

“I annoy people,” Yachi said in a small voice. “I’m—I’m not important and I should just stay out of the way.”

Ukai’s jaw hinged open. “Yachi, that is not in the least true. Who’s been saying that to you? Your classmates?” Surely, nobody on the team—they knew better than that. The team was also just generally delighted by Yachi. The second and third years oscillated between treating her like a spoiled younger sister and an extremely permissive commander: just as happy to dote on her as to eagerly follow her rare and soft-spoken suggestions. The first years were nearly territorial over her, and spent every lunch period just the five of them huddled together in a loud and frequently-disruptive knot.

“N—nobody,” Yachi said. “It just gets all twisted up in my head. I make a mistake and then I spend the whole day thinking about how I could've done better . And nobody wants to spend time around someone who’s always making m—mistakes.” 

Her fingers clenched and unclenched in the fabric of his jacket. He doubted she even noticed she was doing it, too caught up in the storm of her own anxiety. 

“The team doesn’t hate you,” Ukai said, trying to infuse his tone with maximum sincerity. “And, sure, you’ve made mistakes, but that doesn’t mean your friends are going to be mad at you for it. When Kageyama flubs a serve or Nishinoya misses a receive, does everyone else yell at them?”

“No,” she admitted, scrubbing one hand over her eyes. “But that’s different. Kageyama and Nishinoya are—are important to the team. Everyone wants them. I’m—I’m just the manager, and I’m not even good at it.”

Her face was dull, set in a hopeless sort of certainty. Ukai knew at a glance that she wouldn’t believe a single word he said to the contrary. Luckily, there were a whole host of people she would believe, and Ukai knew just where to find them. He shoved himself to his feet with a grunt, and then extended a hand to help her up. “Come with me.”

It was a testament to how much she trusted him that she did so without even asking where they were going. Ukai gathered her discarded backpack up and then shepherded her through the parking lot to his truck. He deposited the bag in the back and walked around to the passenger side to boost her up into the seat. The seatbelt posed a slight problem—she was so short that it cut into her neck no matter how much he fiddled with it—and he settled for having her position it under her arms, hoping guiltily that he wouldn’t get pulled over for child endangerment or something like that. 

She was silent the whole ride over. Ukai navigated on memory and luck, more relieved than he let on when he pulled to a stop in front of Azumane’s house. 

“Here,” he said. “Come on, get out.”

Her face pinched in distress. “Coach—I—I can’t. They—they don’t want to see me. I’ll ruin it.”

“You won’t ruin it. Just go up and knock. If you still want to leave after they see you, I’ll take you home. I promise.”

She bit her lip, hands shaking on her lap.

Ukai opened his door. “I’ll go with you.”

He grabbed her bag again and paced her to Azumane’s front door, consciously slowing his steps to match her shorter stride. She hesitated for a long moment on the porch, but eventually reached out with one finger to press the doorbell. A series of chimes erupted from inside, followed by a chorus of shouts, and she jumped a little. She’d retreated behind him when the door wrenched open, revealing Kageyama standing in the gap.

“Coach?” he said curiously. “Why are you here?” Then he caught sight of Yachi’s half-hidden figure and gave one of those flat-mouthed expressions that—on him—passed for a smile. “Oh. Yachi. Good.”

“Good?” said Yachi, edging out from behind Ukai just the slightest bit.

“Yeah. We need another player to have even teams for charades.”

“Charades?” said Yachi, taking a full step out.

“Kageyama?” Ukai said blandly, pretending to inspect his fingernails. “What do you think about Yachi?”

He shot Ukai a confused glance, but answered dutifully. “Um. She’s . . . really smart, I guess? And nice. And, um. She always shares her mini muffins so I like sitting next to her at lunch.”

Yachi’s eyes filled with tears again and Ukai handed her the bookbag, turning politely away while she dug around for a handkerchief. In the doorway, Kageyama’s face had gone pale and stiff. “Uh. . . Yachi?”

“I like sitting next to you, too,” Yachi sniffled out tearfully. “And I’ll always bring you mini muffins.”

That brought some of the color back to Kageyama’s face, even if he still looked somewhat petrified. Ukai flashed him a discreet thumbs up, feeling quite satisfied with how his plan had turned out. He’d gotten worried for a moment there when he’d seen that it was Kageyama standing in the doorway (Sugawara or Kiyoko would’ve been a safer bet, maybe even Hinata or Ennoshita as well), but the boy had pulled through admirably. Bluntly honest as always, he’d delivered a compliment that Yachi had no choice but to believe. 

“See?” Ukai said. “Go in and have fun with your friends.”

“My friends,” said Yachi, smiling slightly, and Ukai promptly decided that he would fight the whole world if it meant keeping that smile on her face. 

“Yeah. Now, if Sugawara can’t give you a ride home in the morning, call me, okay?”

“Okay, Coach. Thanks.” She gave him a shy wave before turning around and entering the house. Kageyama moved to follow her and the door swung shut, but not before Ukai heard the welcoming cries from the rest of the team echo up the hallway.

Crossing back across the lawn to his truck, Ukai took a moment to pause by the ten-seater Ford Transit van parked in Azumane’s driveway. There were a myriad of bumper stickers pasted to the back window: Karasuno merch, various pride flags, a cheerful BABY ON BOARD sign which someone had decorated with a short, red-haired stick figure. “My cat is a communist” had probably been courtesy of Tsukishima, and the anime girls were undoubtedly Tanaka or Noya. 

As much as Ukai complained about the van, he did appreciate its function in carting the whole team around. It had been sitting thirteen for a while. Ukai had the pleasant suspicion that, soon, it was going to be fourteen.

Chapter Text

     7. Nishinoya Yuu

Nishinoya Yuu would never be called an academic genius.

He regarded his homework—and class in general—as an irritating obstacle that stood between him and the volleyball court, yet another chore to complete before he was free to pursue his passion. He’d chosen to attend Karasuno not for their advanced science programs, above-average number of graduates who went on to attend university, or even their fading legacy as fallen champions: he’d simply liked the look of the uniforms.

The other day Ukai had overheard him telling Hinata, quite earnestly, that the only reason humans couldn’t breathe underwater was that they weren’t trying hard enough.

(“Like, water has oxygen in it. It’s right there in the name. H-2- O .”

“You’re so smart, Noya-senpai!”

“Oh my gods,” Tsukishima said, steadily turning an increasingly horrified shade of red.

“No, no,” Sugawara said, holding up a hand. “Let them be. I want to see where this goes.”)

That wasn’t to say that Nishinoya wasn’t possessed of any intelligence at all: he had a prodigious ability to read the court, second only to Kageyama, and his EQ was among the highest on the team. He picked up on his teammates’ bad moods and troubled episodes easily, just as easily poking and prodding and teasing them into a better mindset. He never seemed to slip into doubt or depression himself, declaring loudly to anyone who’d listen that he’d have the team’s back until the day he died. His shouted comments were often enough to lift even Ukai’s spirits, reminding him that on the worst days, when the whole team seemed an uncoordinated mess, that this was all in pursuit of a shared and lofty dream. 

In short, Nishinoya was one hell of a resilient kid, which made seeing him mope through practice with a dejected look on his face even more disturbing than usual. 

“What’s up with him?” Ukai muttered, leaning over to talk to Takeda. There could be no mistaking which “he” he meant; even Nishinoya’s gelled stripe of hair had deflated. 

“Not sure,” Takeda said, brow furrowed. They both turned to look at Azumane, who had been darting worried glances at his boyfriend all practice. 

“It’s your turn,” Takeda said, after a pause. 

“Not true,” Ukai protested. “I dealt with Ennoshita’s confidence crisis last week.”

“I had Tsukishima hiding in my office just yesterday because he got one B on a chemistry quiz.”

“Tanaka gave me a forty-five minute spiel about Kiyoko’s beauty during morning practice.”

“Hinata threw up on me again after lunch.”

“Okay,” Ukai relented, wincing. “You win. I’ll talk to Nishinoya after practice.”

Takeda shot him a quietly victorious glance and walked off in Kinoshita’s direction, as he was handling the tape-cutting scissors in a manner much too cavalier for Takeda’s teacherly sensibilities. It wasn’t really a point of contention between them, taking care of the kids, because it wasn’t in any way a burden, but they were careful about splitting the responsibility roughly equally. 

Ukai blew the whistle and waited for the team to gather into a rough semicircle around him. He swore several of them were getting taller by the minute, taking a slight step backwards so he didn’t have to crane his neck quite so hard to look into Azumane’s and Tsukishima’s eyes. 

“Good work today,” he said, conscientious of the way most of them were hanging off his every word. With Nationals approaching, they were all feeling the pressure more than normal. The remarkable thing was that it only seemingly inspired them to work that much harder. “Our defense is shaping up well, as is the synchronized attack. We’ll spend some time tomorrow working on serves. Go home, and get some rest. Remember to eat well.”

There was a little muttering at that comment—Ukai was insisting on vegetables at every meal, to certain players’ chagrin—but it was good-natured, and Ukai let them go after a pointed stare at Hinata. 

“Nishinoya,” he called once most of the team had departed for the locker rooms. “Can I talk to you after you get changed?”

Noya’s eyes flickered sideways and he shifted on his feet. “Uhhh . . . sure, Coach.”

“It’s nothing serious,” Ukai said, watching him carefully. “Just a couple questions.” That, at least, eased the tension from Nishinoya’s shoulders. He turned and ducked into his office, leaving the door open deliberately. Instead of the stiff wooden chair he used for parent-teacher conferences and uncomfortable conversations with the vice principal, he pulled out the blue yoga ball and placed it opposite his own seat. It had been a spur-of-the-minute purchase, after spending one too many team meetings watching a few of his players vibrate in place on the gym floor. Ukai loathed it on principle, for its sheer potential to incite chaos and anarchy, but it had become a fixture of his office nonetheless.

Nishinoya shuffled in a few minutes later, damp from the showers and with a distinct lack of his signature indomitable aura. The yoga ball, which was normally enough to earn a yell of excitement, only received a mildly interested glance.

“Nishinoya,” Ukai said. Nishinoya was not a person who appreciated dishonesty, or a lack of straightforwardness, in any form. “You’ve been off this whole practice. Want to tell me what’s going on?”

For a moment, as Nishinoya contorted himself into a sitting position on top of the yoga ball, Ukai genuinely thought he was simply going to reply, “No.” But then he sighed, and sank down a bit, and muttered, “I think I’m going to fail my Japanese Lit test tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Ukai, feeling a bit taken aback. As far as he knew, Nishinoya had never really cared for his grades, given that they didn’t interfere with his ability to play volleyball. “Do you want . . . help studying?”

(He really, really hoped Nishinoya wasn’t going to ask him for help studying.)

Nishinoya grimaced a little, shaking his head. With a frisson of shock and more than a jot of horror, Ukai realized the expression on his face was doubt .

Nishinoya never, ever doubted. He believed, in himself and his team, against all odds, and with conviction enough to move mountains and shake stars.

“Did you . . . when did you know that you wanted to be a coach?” 

Ukai sat back in his seat, folding his hands on top of his desk. “Not until Takeda dragged me over here for the first time, actually.”

“But—”

Ukai huffed out a laugh. “Haven’t you ever heard of love at first sight, Mr. Romantic? That’s what coaching was, for me.”

Nishinoya bit his lip. “But . . . what if I . . . what if I never find that? Like, I’m a second year now, and everyone is going on and on about preparing for third year. My Japanese Lit teacher says that if I fail another test I’ll have practically no chance at getting into university, but . . .”

Ukai waited, for Nishinoya to piece his thoughts together. 

“But if I don’t want to go to university?”

Ukai pursed his lips. On the one hand, he had something of a duty to encourage some sort of academic responsibility in his players. On the other hand . . . He shrugged.

“I didn’t go to university.”

Nishinoya seemed to perk up slightly, a tentative curiosity brightening his face. “Wait, really?”

“Yup. And you know what? Some of the kindest, best people I’ve ever known are people who entered the workforce right after high school. A degree doesn’t necessarily make you a good person. If you don’t feel that university is for you, then don't go. It’s simple as that. And don’t you dare ever let anyone look down on you for it.”

Ukai had met that sort before, people who thought that having an education somehow gave them the right to judge others for not having one. As if there weren’t circumstances in people’s lives that prevented them from being able to attend university: money, family, distance. As if a simple life like Ukai’s was a bad one.  

“You can do anything you like, Nishinoya. Shit, you could go pro right out of high school if you wanted.”

Nishinoya straightened in his seat, chest puffing out a little. “I know.”

And that wasn’t arrogance; it was simple truth. Nishinoya was good.

But he slumped in the next instant. His voice was very small as he said, “What if I don’t want to do that either?”

“Then that’s okay too.”

Nishinoya twisted his fingers together. “You don’t think I’m . . . wasting my potential, or something like that?”

Ukai leaned forward, tapping the desk between them emphatically with one hand. “Listen to me. If it’s not what you want to do, then you’re not wasting anything at all.”

Ukai had strong feelings on that matter. There was no such thing as wasted potential when the person with the potential in question was enjoying themselves. He’d seen the “wasted potential” argument weaponized against too many kids: kids who weren’t the best at what they did but had a passion for it regardless; kids who could’ve been great at something but chose another path.

It always played out the same way. Children forced into activities they didn’t actively want to pursue struggled with unrealistic expectations, leading to increasingly intense self-directed pressure, leading to burn out. Some people were able to hit that rock bottom and simply walk away. Some weren’t. 

Nishinoya, it was true, overflowed with boundless determination and deep-rooted tenacity. It would take him a long time to exhaust himself, to find that bitter vein of unhappiness and doubt. But Ukai didn’t want him ever to find it in the first place.

“You’re not wasting anything ,” he said again.

A tension Ukai hadn’t even been aware of seeped out of Nishinoya’s shoulders. “Oh. Great! You know, I’ve kinda always thought it'd be cool to travel. There are just so many places out there, right?”

“Yes,” Ukai agreed, smiling a little. “There are a lot of places.”

“And like, so many people to meet!”

“Right. Nishinoya—just try and focus on that Japanese Lit exam you have tomorrow, okay? We can talk about post-graduation plans in a few months with Takeda. I’ll have him speak with your teacher. She should not be telling you that you have no chance at going to university if you fail one test.”

Nishinoya beamed at him. “Hey, that’s just what I was saying to Ryuu!”

“Politely, I hope.”

Nishinoya’s eyes shifted sideways and Ukai sighed. “Just keep it out of her earshot.”

“Sure, Coach.” Nishinoya bounced to his feet with renewed energy, catching himself against Ukai’s desk and sending the yoga ball ricocheting backwards. Ukai eyed it. That thing was a menace.

“Hey, Coach, if I get a good grade on this test, can I have one of your cigarettes?”

“No,” said Ukai, making a mental note to start locking his cigarettes in his car during practice, or maybe to start putting them on a shelf in the storage closet too high for Nishinoya to reach. “Absolutely not.”

“Well, can I drive your truck, then?”

“No.”

“Ugh, you’re no fun. Will you at least take me to get my ears pierced?”

“What— no . Stop it!”

“But you have your ears pierced!”

Ukai frowned at him. “And I’m an adult.”

Nishinoya rolled his eyes, but acquiesced, and Ukai squinted. He’d given in far too easily. “Nishinoya, don’t you dare try and DIY it. The piercings will get infected.” 

“I wouldn’t,” Nishinoya said, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Ukai didn’t trust that look for a moment; he’d seen one just like it seconds before Nishinoya had “accidentally” Rolling-Thunder-ed his way into the legs of an opposing team at a match. 

“I’ll make you a deal,” Ukai said. “You do your best on this test—I don’t care what grade you get, just study hard and do your best—and I’ll take you to get your ears pierced if your grandfather says it’s okay and comes along with us.”

Nishinoya whooped, punching one fist in the air. “Yeah! I’m gonna study so hard and I’m gonna do my best!”

“Then you’d better scram,” Ukai said. “You only have a few hours before you should be in bed.”

“Bed,” said Nishinoya, making a rude noise. “Sleeping’s overrated. I got a test to study for!”

“Ten,” Ukai said firmly. “I want you in bed by ten, Nishinoya. I’ll call your grandfather. Don’t think I won’t.”

“Aw man, don’t bring him into this.” Nishinoya kicked the yoga ball back into its place in the corner.

“And don’t forget to eat dinner.”

“Like I could ever forget dinner!” Nishinoya dodged out of Ukai’s office then came tearing back in just as quickly, pointing up at Ukai’s earlobe. “I’m gonna get one just like that.”

Ukai reached up to his own piercing, rolling the small ring under his fingertips. He’d gotten it when he was seventeen, after losing a bet to Shimada and Takinoue. Not that he’d ever tell Nishinoya that. The boy would take it as encouragement, and he already received encouragement enough, hanging out with the likes of Tanaka Saeko.

“It hurts a bit,” Ukai warned. “Like a beesting, and then you have to clean it every day.”

“I’m tough,” Nishinoya said easily.

Ukai looked back at him, all 159 centimeters of sheer mettle. “I know.”

“Man, I’m gonna look so cool! Ryuu is gonna be so jealous.”

“Go home,” Ukai said, standing up from his desk and gently shooing him out the door. “Do your best tomorrow.”

Nishinoya flashed him a grin and a quick thumbs-up before taking off at a dead sprint down the hallway. Shaking his head, Ukai retreated back inside his office and bent down to pull open the bottom drawer of his desk. It was stuffed full with information on both local and far-flung universities, as well as the stats for professional volleyball teams that were known for signing players right out of high school. Ukai rifled through to the back of the stack of papers, extracting a file on various “travel abroad” programs. 

It was too thin, Ukai noted with a frown. He’d have to start working on that, gathering information and fleshing it out. He wanted Nishinoya to have only the very best of options presented to him. Honestly, he was surprised by Nishinoya’s decision not to go pro. But then again, it was obvious to Ukai that volleyball, for Nishinoya, had always been more about the people he played with than the game itself. 

Nishinoya had fallen in love with this team. He deserved something else to fall in love with, too: and if that wasn’t university or professional volleyball, that was okay. 

Ukai slid the papers on Italy out from the file and began to read. 

Chapter Text

     8. Narita Kazuhito

Narita Kazuhito was not very good at taking care of himself.

In Ukai’s opinion, no teenager was, really: they had terrible habits of staying up too late and not eating enough, or of spending too much time outside without bothering to apply sunscreen, or of saving up all their homework to do at the last possible moment and then bemoaning that they “had no time” to do it.

But even in comparison to Hinata, who was a walking disaster on two legs, or Nishinoya, who was a human-shaped bruise most days, Narita was simply a cut above in terms of his ability to get himself into an accident.    

He had, in the span of a single week, tripped over his own feet while jogging outside and skinned both his knees, given himself a mild concussion by hitting his head on an overhanging shelf in the storage room, and somehow (Ukai was not going to ask) fallen out of a second-story window at Tanaka’s house and come to practice bemusedly covered in scratches from the bush he’d landed in.

Ukai wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it; and now that he had seen it, he was darkly considering wrapping Narita in some of the bubble wrap left over from the last time his parents had moved house. Except—he was sure that Narita would somehow manage to strangle himself with the bubble wrap, and then all Ukai’s efforts would be for naught.

The only bright spot was that Narita seemed to have accepted his general bad luck/propensity for attracting accidents long ago, and simply shrugged it off when another mishap befell him. This easy acceptance had given him an unruffled attitude and a nearly-preternaturally calm demeanour, one that was only disrupted by high-stress events such as official matches or Sawamura on the warpath because one of the first years had lost the club room key again.

But even while this calm attitude worked in Narita’s favor, especially when the other second years were trying to drag him into some shenanigan or other, it also worked against him. Specifically when he was ill or injured, as Narita seemed to regard even the worst of ailments as simply a mild inconvenience.

“No,” Ukai said the instant he walked into practice, and saw Narita’s swollen eyes and running nose. “What have I told you brats about coming to practice when you’re sick?”

“Not to,” Narita said dutifully, and then: “But Coach—I’m fine, really—”

“Define ‘fine.’”

“I’m here,” said Narita, which was inarguable but also infuriating. 

“Bench,” Ukai said firmly, planting one hand in between his shoulder blades and propelling him over towards the side of the court. His skin, even through the thin fabric of his t-shirt, was fever-warm against Ukai’s palm. He took another look at Narita’s red-rimmed eyes and winced, digging through the first aid kit and retrieving the extra-large tub of Benadryl. “Here.”

Narita hardly glanced down at the pills before popping two of them into his mouth, swallowing them down with a swig from his Pocari Sweat. 

Ukai bent down and pressed the back of his hand against Narita’s forehead. “You’re sitting out today.”

“Honestly, I’m okay, I don’t need to—”

The gym door swung open, and the third years spilled in with the rest of the team gathered behind them, talking animatedly among themselves about a confession scene they’d witnessed that day at lunch. 

“—totally overdone,” Sugawara complained, waving one hand in front of his nose. “Chocolate and flowers and a note, and all in public!”

“I’d be mortified if it were me,” Azumane said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

“I don’t think you ever have to worry about that,” Sawamura snorted, and looked like he was about to go on except he met Ukai’s eyes over Narita’s head. “Ah. Kazuhito. Feeling alright?”

“You look like shit, dude,” Nishinoya said, ambling over and peering closely into Narita’s face.

“Thanks,” Narita said, pushing Nishinoya away with one hand on his forehead before turning to the side to cough into his elbow. 

“Would you like some Advil?” Kiyoko asked softly. 

“Don’t worry,” Ukai said, waving a hand, and feeling rather proud of himself. “I already gave him some Benadryl.”

A short, horrified silence.

Then a chorus of groans rose up from the second-years. Sawamura pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Ukai said defensively. “ What? Oh gods, don’t tell me he’s allergic.”

If he’d just killed one of his kids —

“Nooooo,” Ennoshita said, drawing the word out. “But, um—”

“Last time we gave him Benadryl,” Tanaka said, “it was last year at a training camp. It was the only thing we had. And he got, like, super weird.”

“It wasn’t that weird, you guys are just mean,” Narita muttered, but even Ukai noticed he’d gone a little pale.

“Kazuhito,” Sugawara said, not unkindly, “we had to pull you down off the dorm room roof. Twice.”

“I don’t even know how I got up there,” Narita said, morosely. “I wouldn’t have taken the pills if I’d known they were Benadryl, it always makes me feel spacey. And weird. And, um. Climbey, I guess? Sorry, Coach.”

“Don’t apologize,” Ukai gritted out, clutching at his temples where he could feel the beginnings of a headache stir to fretful life. “Dammit. I should’ve checked with you before giving you the pills.”

Narita blinked up at him uncertainly. “I’m sure it’ll be fine?”

“You are not to move from that spot for the duration of practice,” Ukai threatened, pointing at him. “I’m serious, Narita.”

Narita sighed. “Yes, Coach.” He slumped a little in his seat, looking so dejected that Sugawara held up a threatening hand, the words “negativity begone” already shaping on his lips.

Hurriedly, Ukai pushed his way in between them, arresting Sugawara’s encouraging karate chop in mid air. Poor Narita, in his condition, didn’t look as if he could withstand a full-strength hit. “Alright, alright, that’s enough. Leave the poor kid alone, please. Last thing we need is for someone else to catch what he’s got.”

That was enough to make the kids scatter reluctantly, though Sawamura lingered behind for a few encouraging pats and Ennoshita pointedly slid Narita’s water bottle closer to him on the bench. 

“Don’t worry,” Ukai said quietly. There was more misery on Narita’s face than was warranted by what was likely a bad cold and taking the wrong medicine. “It’s just one practice. It won’t put you too far behind.”

Narita looked down at his lap. “But I’m already behind. I’m already a benchwarmer, as a second year.”

Ukai put a hand on his shoulder, disregarding his own warnings about getting too close. “And the team wouldn’t be complete without you. You’ll have your chance.” After all, accidents happened. Players hit the limits of their endurance or their skill at matches all the time. Even Hinata was not invincible, and Ukai was certain that Narita would have his moment, too.  

Narita looked up at him with renewed hope. “Right.”

“Watch,” Ukai said, indicating the court with the hand not on Narita’s shoulder. “Take today to observe what you can. Just because you can’t play doesn’t mean you can’t learn.”

Narita seemed to take his words to heart, because, as practice progressed as usual, his eyes were glued to the court. Every time Ukai glanced back over his shoulder at him, Narita was sitting stone-still on the bench, eyes fixed front and leaning forward slightly. 

He became such an expected fixture that when Ukai looked back at him one more time as practice was reaching its midpoint, it was almost a shock to find the bench empty. A quick glance revealed that Narita was nowhere in sight. A slightly slower glance revealed that Narita was nowhere in the gym at all, not standing in Azumane’s conveniently long shadow, or lurking in the storage closet, or even hunkered down in the ball cart (it was a favorite hiding place among the kids, as they loved leaping out of it at unexpected times and scaring Ukai that much closer to death).

It was bothersome—Ukai had specifically instructed him to stay put—but he dismissed it after a reluctant moment. Perhaps Narita had just gone to use the bathroom or something. 

Except—Ukai could not shake the uncomfortable and persistent feeling that something was wrong. 

We had to pull you down off the dorm room roof. Twice . 

Ukai turned on his heel and ran out of the gym. He ran around the corner and across the small green space that fronted the gym and all the way to the building that hosted the club rooms. The volleyball club room was on the second floor; he took the stairs three at a time and didn’t even slow when he slammed his shin against the sharp metal protrusion of the railing. 

He made the second floor just in time to watch Narita reach for the next rung on the fire escape ladder that led to the roof.

“Shit,” said Ukai, and lunged forward. He caught Narita by the ankle—not hard enough to yank him off the ladder, but with enough force to arrest his upwards progress. 

“Narita,” Ukai said in a terribly calm voice, barely able to hear himself talk over the blood rushing in his ears. “What are you doing?”

Narita peered down at him around his outstretched arms. “Going to the roof.”

“Okay,” said Ukai. “Okay. How about you not do that?” There were a million and one more eloquent ways to say that, but Ukai didn’t really feel he could be blamed for his bluntness, given the panic still whiting out the edges of his vision.

There was a long and awful moment where Narita hesitated and Ukai genuinely thought he was going to have to pull the boy down off the ladder with simple brute force, but then Narita capitulated with a small hum and began to climb back down. Ukai kept a hold of his ankle, and then his knee, and then his elbow, until they were both standing on solid ground once again. 

“It’s kinda cold out here,” said Narita thoughtfully. His pupils were blown large, black against the darker brown of his iris. He showed absolutely no awareness of the danger he’d just been in. Ukai stripped off his own jacket and gently helped him into it, one arm at a time. He pulled the zipper up with hands he refused to admit were shaking.

Then, because Narita was there and close enough that Ukai could see the pulse beating quickly through the thin skin under his jaw, he pulled the boy into a fast, hard hug. “No more of that,” he said. Narita was reassuringly solid under what was probably too tight of a grip, all sinew and spine.

Narita wrapped his arms around him obligingly in return. Ukai tried to clear his mind of the image of boy-guts splattered on pavement, and shuddered. He’d almost been too late. Of course, there was no guarantee that Narita would have fallen off the roof once reaching it, and no guarantee that said fall would have done him terminal damage, but Ukai was a firm believer in the principle of rather safe than sorry. 

So firm a believer, in fact, that he kept one hand wrapped around Narita’s elbow as they walked together down the stairs and back to the gym. 

Takeda was waiting for him in the doorway, light glinting off his glasses. Ukai didn’t even want to think about what he’d looked like, sprinting out of the gym like a madman with no explanation whatsoever. 

Takeda looked at Narita, and at Ukai’s hand on Narita’s arm, and at Ukai’s jacket on Narita’s shoulders, and seemingly drew his own conclusions. He nodded at Ukai. They’d talk about this later, after the kids had gone home and Ukai could properly freak the fuck out without a young and impressionable audience.

Takeda had managed to keep the kids corralled inside the gym when Ukai had gone rabbitting off, but several of them were not-so-subtly watching the gym door with curious eyes. Most of them turned away in vague disinterest once Ukai and Narita re-entered the gym without any fanfare, and some of them—Hinata and Kageyama—hadn't even noticed Ukai’s departure in the first place. 

However, Kinoshita and Ennoshita exchanged a concerned glance before turning in Ukai’s direction. Those two were joined at the hip with Narita most days, and whatever they were reading off Narita’s face made them both start to approach him. Ukai made eye contact with Ennoshita and, ever so faintly, shook his head. 

Under his hand, he could feel Narita begin to shake. 

Calmly and with deliberately slow steps, Ukai walked them both over to the bench. He sat and pulled Narita gently down beside him. With just enough absentmindedness that anyone watching would’ve dismissed it as accidental, Takeda took up a stance in front of the bench that blocked the two of them from view of the court. 

Kiyoko, sitting about two feet away and writing diligently in her notebook, glanced up at the disturbance. Ukai hesitated—but she wasn’t the manager for nothing, and simply handed him an extra water bottle before standing and joining Yachi on the other side of the court. 

Ukai untwisted the cap himself, not trusting the persistent trembling in Narita’s hands. “Here.”

Most of the water made it into Narita’s mouth instead of down his jersey, and Ukai counted that as a win before taking the empty bottle back. Narita was growing paler by the second, a likely consequence of the realization of how close to danger he’d come. It had to have been frightening; even more frightening, for someone who depended on the control of his body to perform the sport he loved, to lose that control so abruptly. It was clear he hadn’t been entirely present up on that ladder, and the vacuous ambivalence induced by the drug was seeping away by the second, leaving him cold and shaky. 

“Coach,” Narita said. His breathing hitched before picking up in tempo. “Was I—”

“You’re okay,” Ukai said calmly. “You’re okay now. We’re back in the gym. You’re sitting on the bench. See?”

Narita looked down, seemingly dazed by the sight of hard wood under his legs. “Ah. Yeah.” He abruptly folded over, face in hands. Ukai reached over and gently placed one palm on the nape of his neck, guiding him into a better position with his head in between his knees. He counted out the breaths slowly, a steady cycle of eight-counts until Narita’s shoulders stopped heaving quite so dramatically.

Narita sat back up after some minutes had passed, wiping at his face. “Sorry.”

“No need to be,” Ukai said, staring straight ahead past Takeda’s back to give Narita at least some semblance of privacy. 

“I didn’t mean to make you come and chase me down. I swear, I have no idea how I ended up out there, everything just got so blurry and I couldn’t think.”

Ukai shrugged. “Not the worst reaction to a drug I’ve ever seen.” No, that honor belonged to Shimada, who’d taken a single hit off a joint back in their second year and greened out so badly Ukai’d practically had to sit on him for the next eight hours. 

Despite being wrapped up in Ukai’s jacket, Narita was still shivering, shoulders hunched miserably up around his ears. Ukai transferred the hand that was still resting on the nape of Narita’s neck around to his far shoulder, and tugged. Narita slid across the intervening inches worth of bench between them with a yelp, but didn’t protest when Ukai tucked him firmly under one arm. 

“Go to sleep,” said Ukai.

Narita’s breath puffed out warmly across his collarbone. “Okay, Coach.” 

“And no more rooftop adventures.”

“Okay, Coach.”

He was out within minutes. Ukai tilted his head back and stared at the gym rafters, crisscrossing patterns of wood and metal. In volleyball—in life—they all liked to pretend that the world and the people they knew were untouchable. 

Ukai would’ve preferred to pretend just a little longer. There wasn’t a safety net ready and waiting to catch his kids if they fell. Just Ukai, and his own two hands. He hoped that would always be enough.

Out on the court, Hinata called for a toss, and Kageyama gave it to him. The ball arced upwards, slammed down; met the unforgiving barrier of Sawamura’s forearms and rebounded upwards again, spinning.

Ukai blew out a breath, and pulled Narita a little closer.

Chapter Text

     9. Kageyama Tobio

Kageyama Tobio possessed a sum total of three braincells, and two and a half of them were dedicated to volleyball. 

The remaining half a braincell, when analyzed thoroughly by Ukai over the course of months, seemed to be split between managing the tasks of a) yelling at Hinata, b) yelling at other people for yelling at Hinata, and c) following his senpais around like an exceptionally tall, grumpy, dark-haired duckling.

Frankly, Ukai had given up on that half a braincell. It could do as it liked. Ukai’s focus was on the other two and a half braincells, which were his responsibility to nurture as a coach. 

Kageyama already had a superior sense for the technical aspects of the game, and an overabundance of natural talent; Ukai didn’t have much left to teach him in those departments. What Ukai did have to teach him was how to talk to other people without leaving them with the impression that he was about two seconds away from snapping and murdering them: i.e., teamwork.

In the spirit of facilitating communication between Kageyama and the other players, he and Takeda had come up with a series of questions that Kageyama could ask his teammates in the hopes of getting to know them better. Ukai had even copied the questions down on flashcards so Kageyama didn’t have to memorize them. The questions themselves were pretty simple: what’s your favorite color, tell me about your favorite childhood memory, if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go, etc.

The questions were not the problem.

The problem was that—like with every other thing vaguely pertaining to volleyball—Kageyama was incredibly intense about the whole process and would accept nothing less than perfection. 

“What,” Kageyama said, standing about two centimeters away from Yamaguchi and glowering down at him in a way that was probably supposed to be curious but came off as intimidating, “is your favorite subject in school.”

Yamaguchi squeezed a volleyball between his hands, chuckling nervously. “Errr, math, I guess?”

Kageyama leaned a little closer, eyes narrowing. “Why?”

“Because it . . . makes sense to me?”

“Why?”

Ukai could only be grateful that the kids, on the whole, were being patient with Kageyama’s incessant questioning. They’d seemed to have accepted Kageyama’s various quirks (just like Nishinoya’s hyperactivity and Tanaka’s shirt allergy and Sawamura’s terrifying lung capacity) in stride long ago, and were blatantly supportive of any effort Kageyama made towards inter-team harmony. Off to the side of the court, Sugawara was giving Kageyama a subtle thumbs-up. 

And, really, Ukai should’ve known to expect this: it had to do with volleyball, so of course Kageyama had thrown himself headfirst into the effort of getting to know his teammates better, with absolutely zero sense of restraint or caution. Ukai was honestly just waiting for the day Kageyama approached him with an utterly serious request to start sleeping over at the gym in order to maximize his playing time. He had a variety of responses prepared for when the inevitable happened, ranging from “no” to “absolutely the fuck not, go home”.

Yes, Kageyama ate, lived, and breathed volleyball, so when he approached Ukai at the end of that practice and gravely asked if he could have the next day off, Ukai was understandably concerned.

“Are you sick?” Ukai said, squinting at him. “Come here.” He gestured the boy closer, putting a hand to his forehead. “Huh. You don’t feel hot.”

“I’m not sick,” Kageyama said, stiff as a board under Ukai’s palm. “I’m fine.”

“No you’re not,” Ukai rebutted, immediately, because a Kageyama that did not want to attend practice was not a Kageyama that was fine. “Why do you want to miss practice?”

Hinata, who’d been loitering nearby as he painstakingly peeled a piece of tape off his pointer finger, whipped his head around with a screech. “WHAT? Bakageyama, you can’t miss practice!”

“I can do what I want!” Kageyama snapped back reflexively, shoulders hunching up around his ears. Ukai nudged them back down absentmindedly and sighed, because Hinata’s voice had been loud enough to wake the dead, so any moment now—

“Kageyama’s missing practice?” Sawamura said, turning around with a frown. Nishninoya took advantage of his distraction to wiggle out of his grasp and sidle behind Azumane, probably hoping that Sawamura would forget about the lecture on decorum he’d been in the middle of giving. 

“EHHHH?” Tanaka bounded across the gym and leaned into Kageyama’s space, his features twisted into a concerned scowl. “Dude, you never miss practice. Are you like, dying, or something?”

“Oh my gods,” Yachi said faintly. “Kageyama’s going to die?”

 Of course, the latter part of her sentence happened to be the only thing the rest of the team overheard, rapidly setting off a chain of shocked and devastated exclamations. 

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Yamaguchi wailed, tears springing to his eyes.

“How long do you have left?” Azumane said tremulously. 

“Long enough to get us to Nationals?” Nishinoya demanded. “Right, Kageyama?”

“Uh,” said Kageyama.

“Nationals is not what you should be concerned about right now,” Ennoshita snapped. “He’s literally going to die.”

Narita and Kinoshita clutched onto each other, paling. “Really?”

“Oh my gods,” Sugawara said, clapping a hand over his mouth. “Oh my gods.”

“GUYS,” Ukai bellowed. The panic level in the gym was rapidly spiraling out of control. “NO ONE IS GOING TO DIE.”

That shocked the kids into quiet, though some of them still looked somewhat fearful.

“Kageyama-kun,” Takeda said kindly, tilting his head to one side. “Please tell us why you want to miss practice tomorrow.”

“I’m not dying,” Kageyama said, and scowled. “But my grandfather did , and I want to take tomorrow off because it’s the one-year anniversary and I want to visit his grave.” His hands, down at his sides, had curled into white-knuckled fists.

The gym descended into shivering silence. 

Hinata blanched. “Kageyama . . . Tobio, I didn’t—”

“I know.”

“I didn’t know that—”

“I know . It’s fine, dumbass.”

Kageyama was refusing to meet his eyes, likely because Kageyama knew that he wore his every emotion on his sleeve, and right now even Ukai could read the misery etched into his face.

“Kageyama.” Takeda’s small smile had dropped off his face entirely. “Why don’t you come into my office, please? I can write you a note so you can be excused from school for the whole day, not just for practice.”  

Kageyama gave a stiff nod, trailing Takeda by a few steps as they both disappeared into the staff office. As soon as the door closed behind them, Ukai turned back to the other kids with a sigh. “I think,” he said. “That we can all afford to be a bit . . . more careful with Kageyama for the next few days, yes?”

There was a quiet chorus of, “Yes, Coach,” as the kids shuffled around worriedly, leaning into one another, clutching at each other with suddenly cold hands, frowning.

“Don’t make a big deal out of it,” Ukai reminded them. “I don’t think he’d appreciate it.”

Another round of nods, and then they scattered to go home, more subdued than usual. Hinata split off from the departing pack at the front door and parked himself outside the staff office, sitting cross-legged against the wall. Ukai weighed the effort it would take to get him to leave against the depressing picture of Kageyama walking home by himself on tonight of all nights, and let him be.

And Ukai knew that grief wasn’t exactly a categorizable thing; that it did not fit into a neat box and agree to come when called, but he did think that Takeda had dealt with the immediate crisis and there would be no need for his intervention.

He was wrong.

Kageyama called him early the next morning, early enough that the sun hadn’t even broken the horizon yet. Ukai, hazily stumbling through the dark of his apartment in search of his shoes, picked up the phone on Pavlovian instinct alone. He’d set the same ringtone for all of the kids (or, rather, Nishinoya had and Ukai couldn’t be bothered to change it), and he pressed the Accept Call button the instant the first notes of Smash Mouth’s All Star (Japanese Version) began to play.

“Hello?” said Ukai.

“Do you know how to make pork curry?” said Kageyama.

On the other end of the line, Kageyama’s voice was thin; brittle and as keen as the edge of a blade. Ukai pulled the phone away from his ear to look at the time. 4:38 blinked back at him from the top of the screen. 

“I need to make it the right way,” Kageyama said, sounding increasingly desperate. “I can’t bring it to him if it isn’t right. But I can’t remember what he used to put in it, and I already called Miwa-nee and she doesn’t either, and—and I thought. I thought since you’re always telling us to eat better that you might know how to cook . . .”

Ukai pressed his lips together. The “he” in question was undoubtedly Kageyama’s deceased grandfather, who Kageyama wanted to honor with a special dish. “Are you at home right now?”

“Yes,” said Kageyama, and there was so much exhaustion in the word it made Ukai’s heart clench. He’d planned on simply talking Kageyama through the process, but . . . 

“Okay. I’ll be over soon, alright? I’ll show you how to make it.” He shuffled out of the back of the store towards the ancient computer that sat behind the front desk. As a faculty member at Karasuno, he had access to student records, which included their addresses. He paused to snatch some packages of rosemary and garlic powder off the shelves, muttering over the expiration dates. Now if only he could find his damn shoes— 

“Coach?” came Kageyama’s thready voice.

“Yeah?”

“I, um. I broke one of the dishes already.”

Ukai squinted. “That’s fine. You have others, right?”

“Yeah, but I can’t find the broom and I tried to pick it up, and—”

Ukai closed his eyes. “Okay. Just. Don’t touch anything else until I get there, okay?” 

“Okay.”

Ukai doubled back towards the storage closet. Giving up on the wheezing computer, he navigated to the text screen on his phone (deliberately not hanging up on Kageyama) and pulled up Takeda’s contact. It was, embarrassingly enough, labeled Take-chan , not that Ukai ever intended for that information to see the light of day. 

kageyama address PLS he sent, feeling a sense of relief permeate through him when the three typing dots popped up right away. Takeda was nothing if not reliable. 

In the end, Ukai showed up at Kageyama’s house within the half hour, armed with a broom and the entirety of a spice cabinet’s contents, and sans his shoes. Not that he thought Kageyama would notice, when the boy pulled the door open with eyes so red and swollen Ukai thought it was probably a miracle he could see anything at all. 

“Gods,” Ukai sighed. He set down the broom, and the spices, and opened his arms. Kageyama fell into him so quickly Ukai would’ve thought they’d been drawn together by magnets.

“I’m trying,” Kageyama said, his voice muffled by the fabric of Ukai’s shirt. “I’m trying really hard.”

Ukai knew this was no longer just about the pork curry. “I know.”

“But it’s hard.”

“I know.”

“Am I—am I getting any better?”

Ukai thought about the way Kageyama had learned to gentle his tone when he spoke. The small, wobbling smiles that the team were getting better and better at coaxing out of him. The attention he paid not just to Asahi and Hinata and Tanaka, but to every spiker on the team, even those on the bench. The way he now reached out first for high-fives. He cupped the back of Kageyama’s head with one hand. “You’re doing fine.”

Kageyama sniffed again and pulled away, scrubbing one hand across his face. “I didn’t touch the plate anymore.”

“Good,” Ukai said, and picked the broom back up. It took him ten minutes to clear the ceramic shards from the kitchen floor, during which time he made Kageyama sit at the table with an icepack over his eyes. Kageyama’s fingertips were littered with small nicks that Ukai insisted be each individually covered with a bandaid, lest he get blood in the curry and ruin it. 

It turned out, of course, that they didn’t need Kageyama’s blood to ruin the curry: their first batch ended up splattered liberally over the floor and oven. A smear of sauce mocked them from the ceiling.

“Huh,” said Ukai. “That fucking sucked. New plan.”

Their second batch was burnt, and their third was runny, but their fourth batch made even Kageyama’s eyes widen in appreciation when he dipped the spoon in to taste.

“This is it,” Ukai said, scooping the curry onto three separate plates. “The perfect pork curry.” He hoped, fervently, that it hadn’t been obvious to Kageyama that he’d been operating mostly on guesswork the entire time.

Kageyama looked down at the plates, frowning. “But—where’s your plate, Coach?”

So Ukai ended up borrowing a pair of Kageyama’s shoes to wear onto the 6:15 line that would take them across town to the cemetery, balancing four saran-wrapped plates on his lap. Kageyama fell asleep against his shoulder five minutes into the trip, and woke reluctantly, still yawning when Ukai guided them onto the station platform where Kageyama’s sister was waiting for them, having taken the train in from Tokyo that morning. 

Kageyama Miwa was unmistakable, as dark-haired and fair-skinned as her brother, and carrying that same incredible aura that Ukai was beginning to suspect was more of a Kageyama thing than a Tobio thing.  

Kageyama made a beeline for her, and Ukai hung back while they held each other silently and with white-knuckled intensity. He was taller than she was, but somehow still looked so much smaller wrapped in her embrace. 

“Okay?” said Miwa, and Kageyama nodded, separating from her and wiping at his eyes. He did not, Ukai noticed, let go of the grip he had on the corner of her jacket. 

“Ukai-san,” Miwa said, turning towards him. “I can’t thank you enough for helping us with this.” She looked as exhausted as her brother, dark circles carved out underneath her eyes. She’d be spending the night here, but would be heading back to Tokyo in the morning. 

It had not escaped Ukai’s notice that there’d been no sign of Kageyama’s parents at his house. They were on their own for this, these two: Ukai’s scowling, soft-hearted setter and his sister, who was barely out of childhood herself.

Ukai looked her dead in the eyes. “It was my honor.”

Something devastated splintered across her face, but it was gone in an instant, and then she was all business, taking two of the plates from Ukai’s hands and hustling them both out of the station. The walk to the cemetery was short and quiet, surrounded as they were by early-morning mist and the faint strains of birdsong. 

“This way,” Miwa said, leading them past the cemetery gates and up a grassy hill. The Kageyama family marker stood proud and dark, a monolith of chipped granite stone. “The last time we were here . . .”

“The funeral,” Kageyama said, scuffing his foot in the grass. He sat, taking one of the plates from Miwa’s hands and unwrapping it so steam puffed into the cool morning air. “Hi, Grandpa.”

“Hi, Grandpa,” Miwa echoed, opening her purse and removing a small bouquet of flowers. They looked hand-picked, tied together with a slightly frayed ribbon. Her hand shook as she laid them on the marker. Kageyama’s hand, larger and rougher, reached out to steady hers.

“I’ve brought an, um.” Kageyama’s eyes flickered over to Ukai. “A friend.”

“Hello, Kageyama-san. It’s very nice to meet you,” Ukai said politely, bowing at the waist before sitting down. Something hot and terrible had cracked open inside his chest. This wasn’t his grief to bear, but their sadness had seeped into the very air around him, filling his lungs with every inhale. He couldn’t stand the hesitation in Kageyama’s voice when he’d called Ukai his friend. He couldn’t stand the bleak emptiness in Miwa’s eyes. He wanted, suddenly, to leave. 

(He couldn’t leave. They were children. They were alone, and the sun was rising, and nobody was coming for them.)

“He helped me make this,” Kageyama said softly, placing the unwrapped plate next to the flowers. “It’s very good. Just the way you used to make it.”

Miwa sucked in a ragged breath. “I hope you like it. Thank you . . . thank you for the food.”

They ate the first bites in silence, and Ukai pretended not to see the way they had both begun to cry.  They even cried the same: small, quiet tears that hovered on lower lashes before spilling down pale cheeks.

It was the best curry Ukai had ever eaten.

Miwa began to speak first, about her life in Tokyo—her roommates, her classes, the stray cat she’d found in the alley the other day and was trying to convince her landlord to allow her to keep. Kageyama picked up the thread when she ran out of voice, a rambling stop-and-start stream of words that hardly deviated from the subject of volleyball. Kageyama spoke about the matches he’d participated in and the plays he’d made, but his stories were mainly about people. About Suga-san, who taught Kageyama his techniques without a hint of resentment. About Asahi-san’s persistence and Daichi-san’s deep kindness. About seeing Kiyoko-san’s and Yachi’s smiles from the sidelines after a hard-fought match, regardless of whether they’d won or lost. About the way Ennoshita and Kinoshita and Narita made a habit of taking it in turns to bring him out for dinner once a week, claiming senpai privilege. About Tanaka-san’s readiness to throw down for him in an instant when someone from another team whispered King , and Noya-san’s staunch belief in him both as a setter and as a person. About Yamaguchi fixing up his bleeding nose with gentle hands and about Tsukishima’s rare and startling moments of genuine heart. About Shouyou, who’d found him, and found him, and found him.

 With every word, it became more and more apparent: Kageyama loved hard and he loved deep. Ukai could hardly imagine the wound that his grandfather’s death had torn open in him. He thought he was maybe beginning to understand. 

After a while, the sun rose above the trees, turning the Kageyamas’ hair blacker than black, making it gleam with blue undertones like crows’ wings.

Ukai stayed, and watched over them both.

Chapter Text

     10. Tanaka Ryuunosuke

Tanaka Ryuunosuke, despite his rather tough exterior, had a soft spot a mile wide.

His shaven hair, vaguely goth wardrobe, and general attitude gave a certain impression—at least, until one learned that his haircuts were home-styled at the hands of his sister, his wardrobe was also mainly comprised of his sister’s hand-me-downs, and he was far more likely to finish a fight than start one.

He was undoubtedly a punk, but the type of punk that plucked kittens out of storm drains and spent his spare hours volunteering at soup kitchens. Ukai, who had also been a punk during his own high school days, didn’t feel quite the same need to scold Tanaka for his rowdy behavior that some of the other faculty did. Firstly, he found the notion incredibly, laughably, hypocritical; and secondly, he’d never known Tanaka to actually do something wrong. Against the rules, maybe, but never wrong .

For example, fighting other students was against the rules. Fighting other students when they’d tried to pick on two of your first-year teammates for being small, loud, and kind of clumsy was still against the rules, but it certainly wasn’t wrong. 

Takeda had managed to talk the vice-principal out of suspending Tanaka as a consequence, pointing out that Tanaka had really only been acting in Hinata’s and Yachi’s defense. Tanaka, for his part, had been ready and willing to accept the suspension, seeing it as a reasonable trade for ensuring that his underclassmen remained safe and protected. 

In the end, Tanaka had escaped the suspension, but he’d still been sent home early. Ukai had let him sleep in the staff office until Saeko showed up, at which point she’d high-fived her younger brother and promised to take him out for ice cream as a reward. 

Hinata and Yachi spent the entirety of the next day following Tanaka around with eyes the size of dinner plates, bragging to anyone who’d listen about their super cool senpai who’d beaten up a veritable army for them. The number comprising that “army” had begun at two. Last Ukai heard, it had hit ten and was still growing.

After all that, it was no surprise that Tanaka had been chosen as vice captain in his third year. Unlike Ennoshita, who had required a solid month’s worth of convincing, Tanaka had accepted the position immediately. Like Ennoshita, the vote from the first-years and other second-years had been unanimous. 

Or, rather: the former first-years and second-years. They were second- and third-years now. 

If Ukai blinked, it seemed that just last week his team had been standing on the orange court at Nationals, dueling powerhouse teams for the chance to fly again. It seemed that just yesterday, he’d bid Sawamura, Sugawara, Azumane, and Shimizu farewell, watching with a fierce pride as they finally spread their wings to leave the nest. 

But all that was illusion. With the beginning of a new school year, the Karasuno Men’s volleyball club had received a handful of new applications from hopeful first-years. There were four of them: a short, quiet libero who Nishinoya already had an exuberant eye on, a pair of wing spikers as alike as night and day, and a neurotic middle blocker who couldn’t quite manage to look Yachi in the eye. Ukai had just hosted the first strategy meeting of the season, holed up in Takeda’s office with Tanaka and Ennoshita. Ennoshita had already left, citing his mothers’ anniversary dinner. Tanaka, however, had disappeared into the storage closet ten minutes ago and had yet to re-emerge.

“Do you think he got lost in there?” Takeda asked mildly.

Ukai, who was taking full advantage of their brief time alone to hold Takeda’s hand, grunted. “Don’t know.” He was more concerned with the perfect manner in which Takeda’s fingers slotted in between his. 

“Do you think,” Takeda said, “that somebody ought to go in after him?”

Ukai sighed. Everyone who’d ever described Takeda with some variation of the adjective “mild-mannered” owed him seven hundred yen. “Going, sensei.”

He reluctantly detangled his hand from Takeda’s and stepped towards the storage closet. The door was unlocked and slightly ajar, though the overhead light was off. The slight glow illuminating the space was emanating from the screen of Tanaka’s phone, which was face up on one of the nearby shelves. Tanaka himself was sitting on the floor next to one of the large cardboard boxes, a pile of cloth puddled on his lap.

“Ah,” said Ukai, and eased himself into a sitting position next to Tanaka. 

Tanaka didn’t say anything for several long moments, the sharp lines of his jaw and cheek thrown into harsh relief by the faint light. His fingers clenched and unclenched in the black fabric. 

“Long day?” said Ukai, tipping his head back against a nearby shelf. 

“Yeah,” Tanaka said with a sniff. “I was really sure about all of this . . . well, until today.”

“What’s ‘all of this’?”

“Being Vice Captain.” He held up the fabric he’d had clenched in his fists, allowing the cloth to assume its natural shape. The jersey unfurled with a soft sound, the white number two stark against a black background. 

“You were chosen for a reason,” Ukai reminded him. He’d had this conversation—or at least some iteration of it—with Ennoshita already. 

Tanaka flashed him a grin that petered out into a grimace. “I know, I know. I’m not doubting that. My teammates have faith in me. And I got faith in them. I’m—I’m honored, really. It’s just . . . you ever think about the example that I have to follow?”

Ukai sighed. Sugawara had rained one-man hell down upon him some days, and been the single thread holding the entire team together on others. “How could I forget?”

“That’s the point,” Tanaka said, his voice strained. “Daichi-san was a great Captain. There’s no denying it. We wouldn’t have gotten jack shit done without him, and we all knew it. But Chikara—Chikara’s like him, y’know? He’s got that same fire. He’s dependable, and he’s steady, and he’s fuckin’ impossible to stop when he wants something. They’re the same. But Suga-san was . . . something else. He was nice, and he was patient. He was a natural at helping people. And Coach . . . I’m just not like that at all .”

 Tanaka turned his face away, taking a long breath; Ukai was shocked to see the sheen of tears reflected in the low light. Tanaka rarely cried—even losing matches hardly managed to drag tears out of him.  

“I can’t be like him,” Tanaka said raggedly. “He was too good. They’re all expecting me to be that good. But I can’t. How am I supposed to be even half the Vice Captain he was?”

Ukai reached over and rested his hand on top of Tanaka’s shaved head, feeling Tanaka let out another shuddering sigh. “First of all,” he said, “I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. Sugawara was good, yes—so, so good—but so are you.”

Tanaka shifted uncomfortably. “He—”

“You,” Ukai said firmly. “Always put your teammates first. You’re kind, Tanaka. Your underclassmen look up to you. Who is it that Tsukishima asks for tips on spiking most often? Who was it that Kageyama came to when he couldn’t figure out how to work that one, uh, game on his phone?”

“It was just Pokemon Go, Coach. Not exactly rocket science.”

“Yeah,” Ukai said, “but he asked you for help. Kageyama is bad at that. Notoriously. He could’ve asked anybody—he could’ve kept it to himself—but he asked you .”

“I suppose,” Tanaka said reluctantly, with a sniff. 

Ukai formed his hand into a fist and knocked it gently against the crown of Tanaka’s skull. “Stop that. Do I need to go drag Sugawara all the way back here from Tokyo so he can smack the negativity out of you?”

Tanaka gave a small, sad chuckle. “No, Coach. I promise.”

They sat in silence for another few moments.

“You know,” Ukai said. “Nobody’s expecting you to be Sugawara.”

Tanaka drew his knees up to his chest and folded his arms across the top of them, the jersey still clutched in one white-knuckled fist. “How couldn’t they?”

“Because they’re expecting you to be you.”

Tanaka went utterly still, as if the idea hadn’t even occurred to him. “What?”

These kids. Sometimes so caught up in the endless search to be better, to do better, to play just one more game, that they forgot to take a breath and like themselves as they were. 

“Your teammates are expecting you to be you,” Ukai said again. “They like you because you’re you. There’s no need to become someone else.”

“But I’m kinda loud,” Tanaka muttered. “And rowdy. I’ve gotten suspended three times.”

“Loud?” Ukai shrugged. “The other players will be able to hear you better on the court. Rowdy? You’ve just got plenty of team spirit. Tanaka, what do you think a Vice Captain does ?”

Tanaka hesitated. “He helps out the Captain, I guess. He looks out for his teammates. He plans strategy.”

“And we just had a strategy meeting,” Ukai said. “Didn’t we?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

“And you love looking after your underclassmen, right? You love helping Ennoshita, right? Leading stretches and cleaning the gym and shit.”

“Less so cleaning the gym,” Tanaka said with a flash of teeth. “But yeah. And don’t tell Chikara I said that.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ukai said. He moved his hand down from the coarse top of Tanaka’s head to the nape of his neck and squeezed, just a little, like one might do for a puppy. Ukai had spent more than one night stumbling drunkenly out of bars with Saeko and Takeda on one side and Shimada and Takinoue on the other, and both himself and the advisor were aware that as far as father figures went, Tanaka really didn’t have one. He had Saeko, of course, but she was only one woman, and struggling already to straddle the line between sister and mother.

Ukai knew that sometimes when Tanaka glanced hopefully over at him after a particularly good spike, he was looking for a bit more than a coach’s advice; he was seeking the attention and affection of a father who’d never bothered to stick around, who’d never bothered to get to know his son the way he deserved. Sometimes, the word on Tanaka’s lips wasn’t “Coach,” it was “Dad.” 

Ukai ignored the slip-ups in the moment, because it turned Tanaka red every time and the last thing he wanted to do was embarrass the boy. If he treated Tanaka a little more gently for the rest of practice on those days, nobody had ever picked up on it but Takeda. 

It made Ukai furious down to his bones, because Tanaka was a good kid. He was a great kid. He deserved far better than some deadbeat excuse for a father who’d taken off the moment he found the barest pretext to do so. 

But the most incredible thing about it all—the thing that made Ukai burn with both resentment and terrible, smug delight—was the way Tanaka had never allowed his obvious longing for his father’s acceptance to screw with him. On the one hand, Ukai absolutely hated that it was Tanaka who was saddled with the burden of dealing with his father’s bullshit. On the other hand, Tanaka had proven that he didn’t need his father—that he was better off without him. And it was Tanaka’s father’s loss, for never getting to know the incredible man his son was on the very cusp of becoming.

Tanaka had learned a lesson from his father’s desertion. But none of the unkind ones had ever stuck with him: not the ones about selfishness, or trickery, or greed. Instead, Tanaka had learned that the people around him—the people he cared about—were deserving of his protection, because sometimes they didn’t have anyone else to look out for them. Tanaka gave away the love his father had withheld from him by the handful, knowing that even the people closest to a person were capable of hurting them dreadfully.

Yes, Tanaka’s shoulders were steady, and his grin was wide, but he was still a child, with a child’s needs, and a child’s cravings. 

Ukai gripped him a little tighter, and said, “You know I’m proud of you, right?”

Ukai felt the way the words shuddered through him. He was not under any sort of illusion that he could fix Tanaka’s family life, or stand in as Tanaka’s father, but he could do his part. He would carry as much of the burden as he could. He would speak those words as often as Tanaka needed to hear them—until Tanaka believed them.

There was a distinct rasp to Tanaka’s voice as he replied, “Thanks, Coach.”

“Sugawara was Vice Captain in his own way. He was what the team needed—last year. This year, Karasuno needs you.”

Ukai reached over with his other hand and closed Tanaka’s fingers, one by one, over that number two jersey. “When you wear this, I want you to know it’s because you deserve it. You should be proud to wear that jersey. But never forget: those that came before you, and those that will come after you—they should be proud, too. Because they’re getting to stand shoulder to shoulder with a person like you.”

Abruptly, Tanaka scrambled up onto his knees and tossed the jersey back in its box, briefly dislodging Ukai’s hand from his head. He turned back in the next moment, though, pushing his forehead into the space between Ukai’s neck and shoulder and gripping at Ukai’s shirt with both hands. Ukai held him gently by the back of the neck, letting Tanaka’s breath puff out against his skin until it had evened out again.

After about ten minutes where neither of them spoke, Tanaka shook him off gently and jumped to his feet. Grin firmly back in place, he extended his hands to help Ukai up. “Come on, old man. We’ve been in here for a while, and I bet Sensei’s starting to worry.”

“I could still kick your ass,” Ukai warned him. “Old man or not. Don’t think I couldn’t.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tanaka said, snatching his phone from off the shelf and bounding out the door. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Ukai followed at a more sedate pace, locking the door behind him. Takeda was waiting for them in the corridor, hands in his pockets. “There you both are. I was getting worried.”

“It’s not like anything in there was going to eat us,” Ukai said. Tanaka’s stomach chose that moment to rumble loudly and Ukai laughed. “Except maybe that. Gods.”

“Sorry,” Tanaka said, turning pink.

Takeda peered at him over the tops of his glasses. “You know, we were just on our way out for some yakisoba.”

Behind Tanaka, Ukai raised his eyebrows. That was news to him. Takeda didn’t even so much as turn in his direction, but Ukai could still feel the sudden and immense aura projecting from him, something along the lines of can’t you see I’m working here . Ukai raised his hands in surrender.

“Yeah,” Ukai said, with a cough. “Yeah, we were.”

“You could join us,” Takeda said sweetly, as if the idea had only just occurred to him. “Is your sister around? You could give her a call, too.”

Tanaka brightened. “Yeah, she’s home! Hold on, let me text her.”

He turned away and Ukai slipped past him to stand at Takeda’s shoulder. “Very smooth.”

“I thought so,” Takeda smiled.

Ukai took his hand, half-hidden by the long sleeves of Takeda’s jacket. They’d make some sort of picture walking into the restaurant together: three young-ish adults and one teenager, two of whom were clearly related and two of whom weren’t obviously dating but just as obviously had something going on. They were about as far from that “ideal” dream of the nuclear family as could be, but it was hardly anyone’s business what they were to each other. 

Family didn’t always start in blood—but it didn’t always end there, either.

Chapter Text

     11. Hinata Shouyou

Hinata Shouyou was the hypothetical result of condensing a Type II supernova into one 165 cm human body.

First off, the words “take a break” were as foreign to him as were the words “that’s impossible”: Hinata vibrated at a frequency all his own, constantly imbued with a freakish kind of energy that made Ukai want to check the back of his head for an electrical panel just in case someone had slipped a couple of Energizer Bunny batteries into his brain stem. 

(Unfortunately for Ukai’s general peace of mind, Hinata was not in fact battery-driven and could therefore not be turned off.)

Secondly, Hinata was possessed of a bizarre gravitational orbit much akin to a black hole, into which hapless and unsuspecting volleyball players were prone to falling. He was friends with everyone, even people he really should not have been friends with. Nekoma’s setter, Ukai could understand. Even that quiet giant of a boy from Date Tech.

Ukai did not understand why Hinata was friends with those two second-years from Seijoh, both of whom had inexplicably awkward conversations with Kageyama every time they turned up for a practice match. At this point, Ukai was convinced that all it would take to lure Hinata off that mountain path he biked over every day and into the back of a van would be a smile and an outstretched hand. He’d lectured Hinata about stranger danger for over an hour in the purpose of preventing that very outcome, and nearly been thrown into cardiac arrest when Hinata gazed up at him with a frown and asked, with complete seriousness: “But Coach, what if there really is a lost puppy?”

Thirdly, just as supernovas were an inevitability of the universe, just as stars were born and destined to die, Hinata carried with him an equal sense of the inexorable. Hinata Shouyou was meant for something greater. Ukai saw it in every gravity-defying leap Hinata made. He saw it in every beaming grin. Hinata Shouyou had his hands firmly wrapped around the shape of a dream, and when he made that dream a reality, he would bring change screaming in his wake.

That was many years off, though. For now, he was Ukai’s. He belonged to Ukai, to Karasuno, and it was their job to make of him the best he could be. 

In his second year, Hinata had already improved by leaps and bounds compared to where he was as a first year. His receives had steadied, his form had sharpened, his nerves had eddied away. He was older, taller, even—a little wiser.  

And as they made their way to a practice match with Shiratorizawa, Hinata was making full use of that newfound wisdom. 

The third-years were crowded together near the front of the bus, discussing strategy. Whether that strategy pertained to volleyball or to the vicious yet unspoken battle with the basketball club over gym space, Ukai wasn’t sure. He wasn’t supposed to know about said battle and was still in the stage of pretending he was blissfully ignorant.

“Rolling Thunder ,” Nishinoya said, a little too emphatically, with a worrying hand gesture. Kinoshita shushed him. 

Behind the third-years, Kageyama, Yamaguchi, and Tsukishima had passed out against each other in a seat that was really only meant for two. How’d they gotten in there in the first place, Ukai didn’t know. He thought they’d maybe been fighting over something—a bag of brownies Tsukishima’s brother had baked and sent along with him?—and then when all the wrestling had tired them out, they’d simply fallen asleep where they sat. Yachi, in the seat in front of them, had turned around and was diligently snapping pictures.

That left Hinata alone with the underclassmen. Ukai kept an eye on him as he pulled the bus into one of Shiratorizawa’s massive parking lots. Their new middle blocker—Fujimura—especially was a case of nerves, face pale and hands twisting together anxiously.

“Like, don’t even worry about it,” Hinata said cheerfully. “I threw up right in Tanaka-san’s lap before my first practice match.”

“Really?” Fujimura said.

“Yep! So there’s no need to be nervous. There’s no way you could mess up more than me.”

“ Urgh ,” Fujimura gulped, folding his hands over his stomach. 

Ukai put the bus in park, reaching across the aisle to nudge Takeda awake. “Hey, Sensei. We’re here.”

Takeda stirred into consciousness, reaching up to pat his hair back into place. Ukai was a little slow in handing him his glasses, watching out of the corner of his eyes as Takeda blinked himself awake. A sleepy, soft-looking Takeda was a gift, and not one to be taken lightly. 

As Takeda began to gather his papers back together, Ennoshita stood from the front seat and gave the customary pre-disembarking spiel in a tone that suggested he’d seen it all before and would rather not see it again: “Do not leave the group. Do not bring anyone else into the group. Do not put your bag down, as you will more than likely lose it. Do not start a fight. If you do start a fight, find Tanaka and he will finish it. And finally, do not worry. Shiratorizawa might be a powerhouse school, but they’re more scared of us than we are of them.”

Ukai cranked the bus door open and the bulk of the team shuffled to their feet and down the steps. The third-years underwent a quick game of janken, Tanaka miming a shot to the heart when he lost. He climbed over the few seats behind him and flicked Kageyama into wakefulness, expertly catching the fist that Kageyama reflexively flung in his direction. Unfortunately, the other fist hit Tsukishima right in the stomach and all four boys promptly tumbled out into the aisle with a chorus of yells.

Ukai turned around in his seat to glare at them. Tanaka, catching his look, winced. “Knew I should’ve picked paper.”

They shoved their way down the aisle, Kageyama vociferously protesting his innocence the entire way. That left Ukai alone on the bus with Hinata and Fujimura, who was turning greener by the minute. Grumbling, Ukai reached under his seat and extracted the barf bag he’d started keeping there ever since the incident last year when Nishinoya had eaten four meatbuns and then turned cartwheels before their departure from a training camp. He handed the bag to Hinata. “Take him to the bathroom, please? This is for if he doesn’t make it.”

Hinata nodded, cajoling Fujimura onto his feet with a mixture of bullheaded cheer and equally bullheaded compassion. They made an almost comical sight walking off together—poor, 183 cm Fujimura leaning on a gamely determined yet flagging Hinata.

Ukai shook his head and locked the bus door after them. If they had a singular practice game without some sort of incident, he’d probably start looking for places to hide, as the end times had surely arrived. 

Shiratorizawa’s ancient coach greeted him at the door to the gym. Ukai managed to keep the conversation to a minimum—the old man kept muttering direly about Karasuno’s chances at the upcoming Interhighs—and escaped to his team. Ennoshita already had them well in hand, directing warm-ups with the easy grace of a conductor. Takeda, still absentmindedly rubbing sleep out of his eyes, scooted over to allow him a seat on the bench. Ukai put a gentle hand on his back out of sight of the players.

It was only ten minutes later, watching Fujimura do a diving receive drill, that Ukai realized that Hinata had not yet returned from the bathroom. 

Sighing, Ukai rose to his feet. “I’ve gotta go. We’re down one.”

Takeda took a quick glance across the court. “Ah. Shouyou.”

“Yep. Gonna go make sure the toilet hasn’t eaten him.”

Takeda let out an amused huff and Ukai grinned to himself, stuffing his hands in pockets. He passed the Shiratorizawa players doing their own warm-ups on the other side of the court. They looked like robots, each spike slamming down onto the wood with identical force and speed. 

Shaking his head, Ukai slipped out of the gym doors. Shiratorizawa was good; no one could deny that. They were called a powerhouse for a reason. But they could’ve been better , Ukai thought—if only their players had been allowed to develop their own unique senses of play style. Talent needed air to breathe, but Shiratorizawa had an unfortunate tendency to stifle its players under the suffocating mandate of strength above all. 

Karasuno knew better. There were plenty of kids on Ukai’s team who would never hold a candle to the sheer physical presence of Shiratorizawa’s starting line-up. 

But that didn’t mean those kids didn’t have value.

Ukai hooked a left out of the gym and loped down the long hallway leading to the bathroom. He slowed to a stop, however, near one of the side corridors: two voices filtered out from around the corner, and one of them was Hinata’s distinctive piping tones. 

“—if you can’t measure up to the other players.”

“I don’t see it that way.” Hinata’s voice was cautious, but with a defensive edge.

“Face it, kid: all you’re doing is holding your team back. You should quit and let someone more talented have your spot. Then maybe Karasuno would stand a chance at Interhighs.”

Much, much more quietly, Hinata said: “That’s not true.”

Ukai took his hands out of his pockets and walked around the corner. Hinata had his back to one wall, his bag dumped in a haphazard pile by his feet. Standing over him was Shiratorizawa’s assistant coach, hatchet-faced and stern.

“Hey,” said Ukai, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

They both startled, turning to look at him. Hinata went pink and dipped his head to look at his toes, shuffling his feet.

“Not you,” Ukai said, pointing at him. He guided Hinata back to his side with one hand and wheeled on the other coach. “ You .”

The man’s face betrayed nothing. “Just a friendly word of advice.”

Ukai scoffed. “That was neither friendly, nor was it advice. Is Shiratorizawa so afraid of losing a practice game that they send an adult to intimidate a child?”

“We’re not afraid to lose,” the coach said with one corner of his mouth twisting down into a sneer. Ukai noticed coldly that he had not said anything about not trying to intimidate Hinata. 

“Fuck off before I take you to the officials for harassment.”

“You wouldn’t,” the other coach said, but his eyes had gone very hard. Ukai met his gaze and held it, gleefully imagining tripping him down a long flight of stairs. After a slow eternity, the other coach held his hands up in a gesture of surrender and began the retreat out of the side corridor and back into the main hallway.

Ukai waited until he was almost out of sight to add, a little louder than necessary, “And stay away from my team.”

“Asshole,” Ukai muttered, once he was gone. He turned to look down at Hinata, who’d drooped like an overwatered weed. “What did he say to you?”

Hinata twisted his fingers together nervously. “I’m not sure how much you heard, Coach. Just that—you know. I’m too short to play volleyball. That I should give up now. That I’m a burden on the team . . .”

Ukai closed his eyes briefly and reminded himself that starting a fight with another coach would surely get the whole team kicked out of the practice match. Also, Takeda would be disappointed. Ukai hated it when Takeda got disappointed.

“Hinata, none of that is true. You know that, right?”

Hinata nodded, smiling. Ukai narrowed his eyes at him. “Kid, that is the most unconvincing smile I’ve ever had the misfortune of seeing.”

Slowly, the grin faded from Hinata’s face. That ineffable brightness the boy seemed to carry with him everywhere dimmed, just a little. 

“I love volleyball,” Hinata said quietly. “I love volleyball so much. And—I, I just want to do my best. I want to take this team to Nationals. I want to stand on the court, as long as I can. And most days, it’s easy. But sometimes—sometimes it’s not. And sometimes I think I just might be trying to do, you know. Something impossible.”

Ukai shrugged and jammed his hands back into his front pockets. “So?”

Hinata’s brow furrowed. “I don’t, um. What does that mean?”

“It means: ‘ so? ’”

Hinata’s mouth opened and closed. “Uh—”

“Forty-five years ago, they thought it was impossible to put a man on the moon. Five years ago, they thought it was impossible for someone to run 100 meters in less than 9.7 seconds. Hell, three hours ago, I thought it was impossible for someone to knock out on a moving bus as soon as they put their head down—at least until Tsukishima started drooling on Kageyama.”

There: the ghost of a genuine grin on Hinata’s face.

“Everybody thinks it can’t be done, until it is. They doubt because they can’t dream. Hinata, do you know how many people believed—really believed —Karasuno could make it to Nationals last year?”

Hinata shook his head. Ukai bent slightly to look him in the face. “Sixteen people. The team. Takeda. Me. Everyone else told us not to get our hopes up, right? They cheered for us. They supported us. But deep down—they were afraid.”

“Even my mom,” Hinata said, in a tone of quiet realization. “She said she didn’t want me to be disappointed when we didn’t make it..”

“Right,” Ukai said. “And she was only looking out for you. But we knew better. We knew better, because we showed up every day and did the work to get to Nationals. We went forward, because the only other option was to give in. What you want, Hinata—you’re right. Sometimes it’s not easy. But it’s never impossible.”

There was the same shivering, drawn-bow sense in the air that permeated the court in the instant the ball left a setter’s hands. The presence of a great and immense possibility. 

“Hinata,” Ukai said, a terribly fierce swell of feeling surging up his throat, “don’t you ever let anyone take that dream away from you. If they try—you tell them they’re wrong. Scream it if you have to. And if they still don’t believe you, don’t mind. You’ll show them. One day. Hinata—what do you really want ?”

Hinata’s eyes were calm, wide, fixed on a future Ukai could only dream of. “I want to go pro. I want to be good. No—better. The best. I want to stand side by side with my friends on the court, until I can’t anymore.”

Ukai sighed, straightening up and rolling his shoulders. “Good, then go do it. I’ll be watching.”

“You . . . really mean that.” Hinata shook himself out of his haze, his face creasing in a wondering sort of amazement.

Ukai met his eyes and did not flinch. This part was crucial. “I do.”

“Most people laugh, when I tell them. Not Karasuno, but you know. Other people.”

“Most people are stupid.”

Hinata laughed. “Yeah, I guess.”

Ukai stooped and lifted Hinata’s bag from off the floor, handing it to the boy with one hand. “Go on, now. Shoo and get back to the others before they send out a war party in search of you.”

Hinata saluted. “Sure thing, Coach.” He spun and darted away. Ukai took a half-step after him.

“Hey, Hinata.”

Hinata turned around, bouncing on his toes. “Yes, Coach?”

Ukai flashed a grin at him. The drum of his heartbeat in his ears suddenly sounded a lot like the boom and rush of great dark wings against the sky. “Win this thing.”

Chapter Text

     12. Ennoshita Chikara

Ennoshita Chikara was perhaps the bravest person Ukai had ever met. 

He was not brave in the unthinking, unheeding way where one threw oneself forward without thought for the consequence; he was instead brave in the way where a person felt every inch of the fear flooding them, and then chose to move onward anyway. 

For example, it had taken courage to return to the club after quitting it. It had taken courage to accept the mantle of Captain from Sawamura, along with the infinite and inevitable complications that followed after. It had taken courage to get between Ukai and a teary-eyed Yamaguchi despite the way his own knees were trembling.

Ukai had talked to both of them after that incident—apologized to Yamaguchi, for losing his temper (the advice he’d had to deliver was sound, but his methods had been . . . less than admirable), and thanked Ennoshita, for stopping him before things got out of hand.  

Rare was the kid who’d stand up to their Coach in such a manner; rarer still was the kid who’d shrug and simply claim that it wasn’t anything special in the end. Ukai had known in that moment who the next Captain would be.

And what a Captain Ennoshita was. 

There was no doubt that Sawamura’s legacy was a difficult one to live up to. He’d taken a fallen team and made them champions—picked his teammates off the very floor of defeat to push them to victory time and time again. But Ennoshita had accepted the burden with, if not ease, then equanimity, rising to every challenge thrown his way. 

He had something of Sawamura in him—that far-eyed cunning, the gritted teeth in the face of terrible odds—but there was also undoubtedly an element all his own. Ennoshita had always been reliable, unruffled; but in the past six months he’d sharpened like a blade. Ukai had the vague notion that if an avalanche were to collapse on top of Ennoshita, Ennoshita would emerge upright and at most mildly irritated. 

On the whole, Ukai felt no shame in admitting that Ennoshita was probably a braver man than he was. His suspicion was only confirmed in the week after the Interhighs. Karasuno had lost to Date Tech in the final round, the match slipping away from them on the heels of a botched block. 

The kids—especially the new, bright-eyed first-years—had taken it hard. Kageyama and Hinata had descended into an explosive, days-long fight that culminated in an exasperated Yamaguchi locking them both into the storage room. They’d made up after a few hours (and probably made out, too, if their vaguely guilty expressions when they were let out were anything to go by). 

The first-years, on the other hand, were not so easily consoled. Tanaka and Nishinoya, unable to stand the dejected looks their underclassmen had taken to sporting around practice, had come up with the brilliant idea of pulling a prank to cheer them up. That was all well and good—except they’d made the mistake of choosing the Karasuno Women’s VBC as their targets.

Tanaka and Nishinoya had broken into the girls’ club room and taped pictures of popular heartthrob Kento Yamazaki to every locker. (Personally, Ukai didn’t see the appeal, but the teenage mind was a marvel at the best of times.) 

The girls’ team had responded by breaking into the boys’ club room and occupying it.

Takeda had taken one look at the club room, and the increasingly worrying noises emanating from within, and promptly removed himself from the situation. 

“Good luck,” he said, patting Tanaka on one shoulder and Nishinoya on the other. “This should be a good lesson about the virtue of consequences.”

With every passing second, Tanaka and Noya looked more and more like two men who’d just been informed of their gruesome and impending deaths. They’d already entered the club room once—and been chased back out in a hail of impressively well-aimed projectiles, including but not limited to several rolls of tape and a singular pair of scissors that now stood proud of the opposite wall. Most bafflingly of all, Tanaka had gone in with both shoes on and emerged without them. Ukai really didn’t want to ask. 

The next tribute, their first-year libero, fled the club room in a rush and collapsed into Kinoshita’s arms like he’d just been shot. “S—senpai,” he gasped. “I’ve failed; I’m sorry. They’re too scary.”

“Damn,” Narita muttered, reaching over and patting him absently on the back. Takahashi had been the boys’ best bet at a ceasefire, standing at a nonthreatening 157 cm and possessed of the face of an angel. Tsukishima had thought that if anyone could negotiate peace, it would’ve been him. 

Ukai was also sure that Tsukishima had thought that if anyone had to risk the girls’ wrath, it was certainly not going to be Tsukishima.

Ukai leaned around the barricade the boys had erected in the corridor, composed of a few chairs and one taut volleyball net wrapped around the whole mess to keep it together. Yachi had helped them drag it up the stairs but then deserted them, claiming that she was a neutral party and had too much sympathy for the girls’ team to go on the offense against them. If Ukai was smarter, he’d do as her and Takeda had done, but. Well. This was honestly the most entertainment he’d had in ages . Also, someone had to make sure the next pair of scissors didn’t end up lodged in an eye. 

“That’s it,” Ennoshita said suddenly, shifting around Ukai to gaze down at the fallen Takahashi. “I’m going in.”

His eyes gleamed steel. He pushed first one sleeve up his arm, and then the other. A dread hush fell over the other boys. 

“Chikara . . .” Tanaka said tearfully, clutching at his pants leg. “My Captain. Don’t go. Don’t leave us here.”

Ukai moved quietly out of Ennoshita’s path as he clenched his jaw and raised his chin. He shook Tanaka off with a brisk jerk of his leg.

“It’s what must be done.”

He strode forward from behind the barricade like an avenging angel, or a general at war, dodging the first roll of tape thrown at him and catching the second with an uncanny swiftness before vanishing into the club room. 

A cheer went up from the boys. Ukai wasn’t sure how long Ennoshita was in the lions’ den: it could’ve been ten minutes, or an hour, but when he emerged, it was with the girls’ team in tow. 

It was over quickly after that. Ennoshita had apologized to the girls on Tanaka and Noya’s behalf (no, it would not happen again; yes, they really were sorry; yes, they would clean the girls’ gym for a month, it was really no trouble— shut it Nishinoya you’re getting off easy ) and brokered an uneasy peace. The girls swept off in a wave of floral perfume and smug expressions. Ukai high-fived the Captain as she passed. 

Of course, that left the boys with their newly decorated club room—the girls had managed to coat every available surface in bubble wrap. 

“What the hell?” Tanaka said, picking up a vaguely oblong object from the inside of his locker. 

“Oh, it’s your shoe,” Kinoshita said mildly, leaning over his shoulder. Yamaguchi attempted to sit down on the bench and leapt back up with a yelp when several loud pop s sounded out. 

Shaking his head, Ennoshita backed out of the club room and nearly bumped into Ukai, who was gazing in at the room in a morbid curiosity. It had all just been done so neatly .

“Oh, Coach.” Ennoshita was frowning. Ukai had become familiar with the variant forms of Ennoshita’s frowns over the past eighteen months: there was the Tanaka frown, the Noya frown, the Tanaka-and-Noya frown, the don’t-you-fucking- dare -I-swear-I’ll-kill-you-no- really frown, the stop-get-down-from-there frown, etc. etc.

The frown currently puckering the skin between Ennoshita’s brows was not one Ukai recognized. It was quieter, and therefore infinitely more worrying. 

“Can I talk to you?”

Ukai glanced back in at the club room—Kageyama had peeled a strip of bubble wrap off the wall and was actively attempting to smother Hinata despite the screaming—and nodded, waving Ennoshita back behind the barricade. “What’s up?”

Ennoshita cast his eyes down at the floor, shifting nervously from foot to foot. He took a deep breath and Ukai saw again the look of a man screwing his courage to the sticking point. 

Then Ennoshita abruptly folded himself in half into a bow, shouting. “Pleasedon’tfiremefrombeingCaptain!”

“What?” said Ukai. 

Ennoshita straightened up. “Please don’t . . . fire me from being Captain.”

“ What ?” said Ukai again.

Ennoshita swallowed, throat jumping. “I know I haven’t done the best job so far—but I promise, I’ll work harder from now on. I’ll be better. Please don’t take this away from me.”

“Whoa, whoa, hold on.” Ukai held his hands up in a bracing gesture. Had someone said something? Not the team, never the team—they loved Ennoshita jealously, followed him mind and body and heart and soul—probably would start a war for him if he asked. Maybe a player from a rival team? Had Ukai said something, by accident? “Where is this all coming from?”

Ennoshita blinked. His eyes were guileless and very wide. “Well, I haven’t been doing the best job so far, have I?”

Ukai cast his mind back. Ennoshita had just successfully negotiated peace with the formidable body that was the Karasuno Women’s VBC. The day before that, he’d talked Tanaka into actually doing his homework for once, instead of trying to copy off Narita. Two weeks ago during a practice match when Seijoh’s Captain had called him ‘Mr. Uninteresting’ (a play on Sugawara’s old nickname), Ennoshita had simply frowned mildly at him and informed him that his uniform shirt was on inside out. It hadn’t been, of course, but Ennoshita had made him look and that was what mattered. 

“Gods,” Ukai sighed. “Is this about Interhigh?”

Ennoshita’s mouth flattened. Tiny stress lines spidered out from the corners of his eyes. “I’m only useful as a Captain if I can help us win, Coach. I botched that last receive, but I promise I can do better, if you give me one more chance. I have—I have to be good, I have to handle things—no one wants a Captain who can’t do the bare minimum, and I’m not worth anything if I can’t—”

“ Not worth anything ?” Ukai said incredulously. He’d known, of course, that Ennoshita’s self-esteem scraped the bottom of the barrel, but he hadn’t thought it was quite this bad. 

There was only bleak acknowledgement in Ennoshita’s eyes as he replied, “I’m not smart, Coach, and I’m not funny, or particularly inspiring. I can’t set well and my spikes are weak. The one thing I have going for me as a Captain is my ability to help us win by holding the team together. I let us lose at Interhigh, and I know you must be thinking about replacing me, but please—”

“Do you?” said Ukai. 

“Sorry?”

Ukai crossed his arms. “ Do you know that I’m thinking about replacing you? You’ve got good intuition, kid, but I wasn’t aware you were a mind reader.”

Ennoshita’s jaw clenched. “It’s obvious.”

And he sounded so certain, too.

Ukai sighed, tugging one of the chairs out of the nearby barricade and sitting down in it. This way, he wasn’t looming over Ennoshita. This way, Ennoshita was looking down at him. “Ennoshita, nobody wants to replace you as Captain.”

“But—”

“Unless you want to be replaced.”

“No!” 

Ennoshita had most of the rest of the world—his classmates, his rivals, even his parents, Ukai thought—convinced that he was some sort of unflappable robot. After all, Ennoshita never lost his temper. Ennoshita always had himself fully under control. Ennoshita was calm, and reasonable, and even-keeled.

Ukai knew better. Karasuno was a team for the try-hards and the do-betters, the weirdest and the wildest: a team for the obsessed and the monstrous, the geniuses and the misfits and the outcasts and the borderline-insane. Ennoshita was just as batshit about volleyball as the rest of them were. He was just better at hiding it. Ennoshita did not want to give up his position as Captain, and Ukai couldn’t figure out why he seemed so determined to talk Ukai into taking it from him. 

“Ennoshita, do you—” Ukai paused, rewording his sentence. “Why do you think that winning is the only thing that makes you worthy as a Captain?”

“Because winning is what the team wants, and it’s the Captain’s job to serve the team.”

Once again, nothing Ennoshita was saying was wrong, and yet . He always presented the worst possible reflection of himself. 

Ukai crossed his arms, leaning forward. He waited until Ennoshita met his eyes. “Do you think the team wants to win more than they want you?”

Here, the crux of the matter: Ennoshita believed that he was incidental to the team. He could not see that he was instrumental. 

Ennoshita hesitated and Ukai blew out a breath. “How about this. Do you want to win more than you want—say, Yamaguchi—on the team? If you could win but you had to do it without him—”

Ennoshita actually took a step back, indignation clouding his face. “Of course not! If I can’t win with everyone, then what’s the point?”

Ukai waited, eyebrows raised, and a dawning comprehension stole slowly across Ennoshita’s face. “Ah.”

“Ah, indeed.”

“But that’s different,” Ennoshita argued weakly. “Yamaguchi is—he’s clever, you know, and passionate—and he knows just how to handle the other second-years—”

“ Alright ,” Ukai said. “Shit, kid. Give me your notebook.”

Ennoshita reached into a pocket and handed it over. He was constantly scribbling in it while off the court: Ukai had caught him with it during water breaks, on the bus before games, crouched over it in the hallway between classes. Flipping past hasty sketches and what he thought might have been half-finished scripts, Ukai came to an empty page near the back. 

He pointed a finger at a wary Ennoshita. “You. Stay right there.”

Ennoshita nodded and Ukai pulled the pen from his collar. He backtracked down the hallway and into the club room. Yachi and Takeda were back, Yachi balancing gamely on an irritated-looking Tsukishima’s shoulders to peel a piece of bubble wrap down from off the ceiling. Ukai seized the nearest kid—Takahashi—by the shoulder and handed him the notebook and pen. 

“Describe Ennoshita in one word. Go.”

Takahashi was apparently still too traumatized by earlier events to question him, and dutifully scrawled down the word reliable. Making a circuit of the club room, Ukai posed the same question to the rest of the team until he’d collected a word from all thirteen of them. Noya had written musckley (spelled exactly like that) and included a small drawing of a bulging bicep. Kageyama had put down nice to me , which was technically three words and not one, but Ukai was willing to let it slide. Takeda slipped the pen from his fingers at the last second and added an outstanding young man .

Ukai was halfway down the hall again before he remembered. He braced the notebook against his knee, and in broad strokes, wrote down CAPTAIN .

Being one of the only two people on the team possessed of both patience and listening skills, Ennoshita was waiting where Ukai had left him. Ukai flipped the notebook around and handed it to him. 

“What is . . .” 

Ennoshita hadn’t cried when they’d lost the Interhighs, too busy focusing on holding it together in front of the rest of the team. There was no one to hold it together for now, and Ukai politely turned his face away as Ennoshita breathed his way through a couple of strangled sobs. “This isn’t me. It can’t be.”

Ukai tore the paper from the notebook and pinned it to the black fabric of Ennoshita’s uniform jacket with one finger, right over his heart. He didn’t let go until Ennoshita had raised an unsteady hand to hold it to his chest. Despite his words, Ennoshita was clutching the paper so hard his knuckles had gone white.

“But it is.” Ukai sighed, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Ennoshita. I know it’s hard to believe. But I’m not in the habit of lying, and neither are your teammates. If you can’t trust yourself, can you at least trust them? Trust them to know you. They wouldn’t lead you astray.”

Ennoshita had not taken his eyes from the paper. His mouth shaped faintly around the word brave .

“Nobody wants you to step down as Captain, least of all me. And your teammates—your friends , Ennoshita—they’re not your friends because you help them win. They’re not going to stop being your friends because you lost. Crows are not fair-weather birds. We’re all we have at the end of the day, and we’ve been through worse than one loss at Interhighs. You’re worth more than your game record. I understand that it’s easy to forget all that. That’s why you have that paper now, for when it’s hard to remember.”

Ennoshita sniffed, ducking into another bow. When he straightened, he tore a second piece of paper from the notebook and withdrew his own pen from his pocket to write something down. Ukai took the paper by reflex when Ennoshita handed it to him.  

Thank you for staying. 

When Ukai had the presence of mind to look up again, Ennoshita had passed him and was walking quickly down the corridor. “The bubble wrap,” he said over his shoulder in a strangled voice. Ukai didn’t comment when he saw Ennoshita duck into the bathroom and not the club room. Before he entered, though, Ennoshita carefully folded his piece of paper into a square. Instead of his pocket, he tucked it into the collar of his uniform jacket, and held it there briefly with the lightest touch of a hand.

Ukai looked back down at his own sheet of paper. Thank you for staying. 

With careful fingers, Ukai folded the paper so the words were at the front. He popped his case off the top of his phone and slid the paper into the gap, nestling it between plastic and metal. Nobody would ever know the paper was there but him—nobody but him, and Ennoshita.

If Ukai picked up the habit of absentmindedly touching his phone during games, that was nobody’s business but his own. Sometimes he caught Ennoshita reaching for his collar with two fingers, and he knew—that Ennoshita was reminding himself that he had a team behind him; that he never had been that worst version of himself he’d been so determined to cling to for so long. Sometimes he and Ennoshita would make eye contact in those moments, and Ennoshita would smile and duck his head, and then he would turn back to the court with a raised voice and squared shoulders, and he would play on.

Chapter Text

     13. Tsukishima Kei

Tsukishima Kei cared a lot more than he liked to let on. 

It had always been hidden at the heart of him, there to see for anyone who cared enough to look: the secret, stumbling affection he extended to other people, buried under twelve layers of snark and one of terrible vulnerability. He was a master of misdirection, of saying one thing and doing another, of pretending to give zero fucks while giving quite a few fucks, actually. 

Ukai had him figured out, though. Ukai had him figured out, because for all his complaining, Tsukishima always (eventually) followed through. He scolded the new first-years about dirtying up his car, and then continued to drive them back and forth to practice anyway. He berated Hinata and Kageyama over their poor grades and then spent long hours in the library with them trying to push them into passing. He moaned about morning practice, and then kept on showing up early. 

After almost three years on the same team, Tsukishima’s year-mates had gotten around to deducing that Tsukishima’s bark was much worse than his bite. Yamaguchi had always known, and Hinata and Yachi had cottoned on soon after. Kageyama had taken the longest, though that was likely a consequence of who Kageyama was as a person, and the fact that if Tsukishima wasn’t talking volleyball, Kageyama often didn’t want to hear it. 

However, whatever fear, apprehension, or distaste most of his fellow third-years had once beheld him with, Tsukishima’s frigid reputation had almost entirely lost its effect on them. Yamaguchi, now Captain, chased him around the court with the same intensity as he did everyone else, hollering at him to lift those knees a little higher, Tsukki!! 

Instead of cowering away from him in a panic, it was Yachi’s turn as their iron-fisted, velvet-gloved manager to intimidate him, especially into assuming somewhat of a leadership role as an upperclassman. Tsukishima didn’t quite run away from her when he saw her coming, but Ukai did notice that he did somehow manage to keep the breadth of the court in between them whenever she got that particular Look in her eye.

Hinata and Kageyama had never given Tsukishima’s chilly personality much thought to begin with, and now they gave it even less. They were prone to invading his space to the extreme, knocking into him with sharp elbows and prodding knees; shouting at each other over his blonde head between them. The remarkable thing was that Tsukishima taken to tolerating it, although not without several snide and pointed remarks.

But, however Tsukishima’s year-mates regarded him, most of the underclassmen were still somewhat afraid of him. 

This did not stop them from, consciously or unconsciously, taking every available opportunity to bother him. 

“Tsukishima-senpaiiiiii,” one of the underclassmen begged, pressing his nose to the cooler in Ukai’s shop in which the popsicles were kept. “Will you please please please buy me a popsicle please I’m so hungry and I have no money because the new My Hero came out and I just had to have it—”

“Manage your money better, Ito-kun,” Tsukishima said coldly, shouldering the cooler door open and seizing a popsicle. “Then you wouldn’t have this problem.”

Ito moaned. “But Kei-sannnnnn—”

“Ew,” Tsukishima said without inflection. “Do not call me that. We’re not friends.”

“Rude,” Ito sulked, bobbing behind Tsukishima’s shoulder like a particularly forlorn life raft. Tsukishima walked a little faster. 

Ukai looked down at the popsicle Tsukishima slapped onto the check-out counter. It was grape. Tsukishima hated grape popsicles. Funnily enough, they happened to be Ito’s favorite. 

Ito seemed to realize this at the same time Ukai did, because he latched onto Tsukishima’s sleeve with a beaming grin. “Tsukishima-senpai, you’re the best!”

Tsukishima was steadily going redder. “This isn’t for you,” he snapped, even as he shoved the popsicle into Ito’s hands. “Don’t get any ideas. This doesn’t mean I like you. You are tiny and annoying.”

Ukai reflected that, to Tsukishima, most everyone on the team was tiny and annoying, and he chose to hang about with them anyway.

“You’re my absolute favorite person in the whole world and I love you,” Ito said, trying to seize Tsukishima by the shoulders and only succeeding in reaching high enough to grip him just above the elbow. 

“Eugh,” said Tsukishima, twisting himself free from Ito’s grasp. “I hate you so much.” He exited the shop with alacrity. Ito gave Ukai a bright, scrunched-up little grin and hurried after him, already hollering at the top of his lungs: Tsukishima-senpai no don’t leave let’s hang out do you wanna come over to my house and play Mario Kart—

They were the last two out the door (most of the underclassmen had curfews, and Yachi and Yamaguchi had corralled Hinata and Kageyama into a last-minute study session) which meant that Ukai finally had some time to put his head down. He drifted for a little bit, and was enjoying an exceedingly pleasant daydream about cuddling on a picnic date with Takeda—a soft, soft pair of hands in his hair, a grin like sunlight over water—when the door swung open again, jolting him back to wakefulness.

Tsukishima was tall enough that Ukai could see him above the shelves, occasionally dropping down out of sight to pluck something off a lower ledge. Ukai raised his eyebrows. It was out of character for Tsukishima to have forgotten something at the shop; even more out of character for him to be moving as he was—jerkily, almost aimlessly, doubling back down aisles he’d already perused. 

Ukai shifted his feet down off the counter to place them flat on the floor. When Tsukishima arrived at the register, he had already retreated behind the shield of his glasses and a stony expression as he did when faced with a distasteful social situation, or sometimes even Hinata and Kageyama at their most fractious. 

Ukai looked down at the items Tsukishima had placed on the counter. Three bottles of extra-strength acetaminophen, a heating pad, and a case of bottled water. After a pause, Tsukishima reached over and added a pack of mints to the pile.

“Tsukishima,” Ukai said carefully. “What’s all this for?” He did not ask, are you alright , because Tsukishima’s response to such questions was at best an offended huff and at worst a venomous retort that would have unmanned Ukai, his grandfather, and probably any of Ukai’s future offspring as well. 

Tsukishima’s face was impervious. “My brother is unwell.”

Ukai considered the supplies laid out before him. It wasn’t actually what a sick person would need; more of a panicking teenager’s estimation of what a sick person would need. Tsukishima must have read some of this in his face, because he said stiffly, “My mother is at a business conference. She’s giving a presentation. It’s very important. I can’t disturb her. And nii-san is . . . out of it.”

Ukai glanced at the clock. It was barely ten, three hours until close. He pocketed his keys anyway, shuffling past Tsukishima and into the aisles. He picked up some ibuprofen, and then after some consideration, naproxen as well. Into his pockets went several ice packs and a thermometer. “Is he throwing up?”

Tsukishima was preoccupied with digging the tip of his toe into a crack in the tile. He kept looking over his shoulder, at the door. “Yes. A lot.”

Ukai added a sleeve of bland rice crackers and several bottles of sports drinks to his haul. He was banking on the Tsukishima household having the ingredients for a thin broth. If not, he’d have to run back to the shop. “Come on, then. You’ll have to lead.”

“I don’t need—” Tsukishima began.

“It’s not about need,” Ukai said. They entered a brief stare-off: Tsukishima was the first to look away. But then again, Tsukishima had always been good about picking his battles. 

Tsukishima led the way out of the store, Ukai pausing for a moment to lock the front door behind him. They set a fast pace down the night-darkened street. With every streetlamp they passed, Tsukishima’s urgency increased, his long legs eating up the distance. Ukai pressed his lips together—Tsukishima was tall —and sped up. 

Tsukishima’s house was a cozy two-story at the end of a street. Pushing the door open quietly, Tsukishima gestured Ukai into a small if well-appointed foyer, decorated with framed pictures of both Tsukishima brothers at various stages of life. A tall blonde woman beamed out alongside them in several: the mother, Ukai presumed. 

“He’s in his room,” Tsukishima said stiffly, shucking off his shoes. Ukai followed him past a comfortable-looking living room to a door at the end of the hallway, stopping briefly at a small kitchen table to set down the sports drinks and crackers. 

Quietly knocking his knuckles against the doorframe, Tsukishima edged his way into his brother’s room. “Akiteru?”

The light was off, casting the bed and dresser in deep shadow. An answering groan resonated out of what looked like a pile of blankets. If Ukai squinted, it resolved itself into a shivering young man whose fringe was plastered to his forehead with sweat. 

“Kei,” said Akiteru wearily. His voice was hoarse. “I told you I’m fine.”

Tsukishima marched into the room, swatting Akiteru’s hands away from his face and replacing them with his own instead. “Right, because people who are ‘fine’ nearly pass out on their way to the bathroom to throw up for the third time.”

“Second time,” said Akiteru after a pause. 

“Do you think I give a shit about—” 

At that moment, Akiteru caught sight of Ukai standing in the doorway behind Tsukishima. “Ah. Ukai-san. I’m so sorry, you didn’t need to come all this way. Kei fusses too much. I promise I’ll be fine with some water and some rest.” He broke off into a coughing fit that left him gasping.

“Nii-chan,” Tsukishima said reproachfully, and Ukai choked on a laugh. It was the exact tone Yamaguchi used to say be nice, Tsukki. He wondered whether Tsukishima had picked it up from Yamaguchi, or the other way around. 

“Kei,” said Akiteru in the same manner, and Ukai was lit up with the epiphany that both of them had picked it up from him .

“I’m not arguing about this,” Tsukishima said flatly. “You need help, and I can’t do it by myself.”

Akiteru opened his mouth again. Sensing that an argument was indeed about to break out whether Tsukishima wanted one or not, Ukai stepped forward hastily. “Here.” He pulled the thermometer from his pocket, unwrapping it and popping it into Akiteru’s still-open mouth. 

“Mmrgh,” said Akiteru, but at least he didn’t try and spit the device out, unlike certain other people Ukai could name, if certain other people stood about 164 cm tall and had bright orange hair. When the thermometer beeped, Ukai was quick to turn the screen so Tsukishima couldn’t see it. 38.9 C. That was . . . not ideal.

“Tsukishima,” Ukai said calmly, “Can you go get me a washcloth soaked in cold water, please?”

Tsukishima stepped out and Akiteru swung his gaze upwards to Ukai’s face. With his brother gone, Akiteru seemed to collapse in on himself, his eyes fever-bright and hazy. Wordlessly, Ukai showed him the screen on the thermometer. “How do you really feel?”

“Like shit,” Akiteru rasped. “But Kei—he worries too much. I really am sorry he dragged you all the way over here.”

“There was no dragging,” Ukai assured him. “On his part, at least.”

“Oh, good.” Energy seemingly spent, Akiteru closed his eyes and sank back into his blankets. Tsukishima entered the room a few seconds later, flung the washcloth at Akiteru’s head, and stormed back out. Akiteru adjusted it slightly so the fabric was no longer covering one eye. “He’s really upset.”

Ukai, who knew that the measure of Tsukishima’s irritation with a person was also generally positively correlated with the measure of his worry for them, had to agree. He gently prodded Akiteru into rolling over, stripping the sheets out from underneath him. The washer was in a little closet right outside the living room and Ukai dumped the sheets in along with some detergent before going back in to ask Akiteru where the spare bedding was. Newly ensconced in clean sheets, Akiteru seemed to fall back off into sleep almost instantaneously. Ukai left the door half-closed behind him.

In the kitchen, Tsukishima had pulled out a pot and was glaring at it like it had just given him extra laps. Ukai pried his fingers off the handle before they left dents in the metal. “Hey.”

“Why am I so bad at this?” Tsukishima abruptly burst out. “Why can’t I—”

“You’re not bad at—”

“You don’t understand; he’s good at this. He’s good at this. Every time I get sick he takes care of me and it’s fine. But when he needs me —”

“Tsukishima, it’s not a competition—”

“He's just nicer. He’s nicer than me, and—”

“Tsukishima.” Ukai took the boy by the shoulders—he dared nothing so clingy as a hug—and turned him away from the stove, away from whatever it was that Tsukishima was seeing that made his eyes go opaque even behind the glasses. “It’s fine. He’s fine. You’re not bad at this, you’re just . . . not experienced.”

Tsukishima breathed in long and slow and shaky, and dropped his hands to his sides. “Fine. Show me, then?”

“Yes,” Ukai said. “Of course.”

Ukai spent the next thirty minutes teaching Tsukishima how to make a thin broth from chicken bones and a handful of vegetables. He spent the thirty minutes after that showing him how to scrub a toilet. They checked up on Akiteru periodically, dispensing medicine as requested. Mostly, he remained asleep, except for once around midnight when he woke and didn’t recognize either of them. When Ukai bent over him to check his temperature again, he clutched onto Ukai’s sleeve with one hand and whispered, “ Dad? ” in such a hopeful tone that Tsukishima abruptly fled the room in a clatter of long limbs and panic.

“Sure,” said Ukai with unfazed equanimity, coaxing him into opening his mouth for a spoonful of soup. Tsukishima Akiteru was not the oddest person to have mistaken him for their father, and Ukai was fatally certain there would, at some point, be odder. “Sure. Yeah.” 

Tsukishima slunk balefully back in five minutes later, and slumped down next to his brother’s bed with a pinched-up expression on his face. Ukai saw the clenched up fists, and tactfully made his exit. 

Back out in the kitchen and searching for the dish soap, he caught very little of the following (likely one-sided) conversation, excepting a few quiet murmurs of apology, and one, aborted, “I lo—”

“You can leave,” Tsukishima said, coming up behind Ukai and taking the dirtied pot from his hands. “It’s late.”

“It’s also dark,” Ukai pointed out. “Wouldn’t want me to trip and die, would you?”

Tsukishima eyed him in a way that suggested he knew exactly what Ukai was doing, but couldn’t quite bring himself to care either way. “Whatever.”

“I’ll take the armchair.”

There were, in fact, two armchairs—Ukai made sure to stake his claim on the less comfortable one, when it became clear that Tsukishima had determined to suffer with him. If the position also brought him in closer proximity to Akiteru than his upstairs bedroom, Ukai didn’t mention it. 

Tsukishima fell asleep almost immediately, his glasses still on and his long legs curled up awkwardly beneath him. Ukai stood from his seat and eased the glasses from his nose and his knees into straightness. Tsukishima stirred, briefly muttered something unintelligible, and dropped back off into dreams.  

Ukai settled into the other armchair. With Akiteru’s bedroom door cracked open, he could see both Tsukishima boys at once, the rhythm of their slow breaths in time. Leaning over, he used a foot to kick a stray pillow out from the path between the bathroom and the bedroom. Ukai closed his eyes, and held his vigil.    

Chapter Text

     14. Yamaguchi Tadashi

Yamaguchi Tadashi was akin to the eye of a hurricane. 

On most days, Yamaguchi was the sole spot of calm among the chaos, the concentrated center of a storm of shouting and bickering and the underclassmen attempting handstands while the upperclassmen only cheered them on. He was, on a sheerly surface level, the least intimidating member of Karasuno’s current line-up. 

Yamaguchi had a pleasant demeanor, an open smile, and a welcoming aura. Ukai could trust him with things like keys and scissors without fearing that the object in question would get swallowed, lost, or otherwise grossly misused. Yamaguchi was the type of kid that helped old ladies cross streets. If there was some sort of karmic checkbook out there, Ukai was certain that Yamaguchi existed firmly in the green.

The thing, however, about the eyes of hurricanes—they were prone to closing. And once the eye had closed, reabsorbed into the storm wall, well, there was no telling what was about to go down, was there? There was no calm to be had. 

Karasuno was a team, but they were also, among other things, a happening : as in Karasuno happened to other people. Karasuno happened to other people, with all the subtlety and charm of a tidal wave. 

Yamaguchi was normally good at keeping the flood waters at bay. He was content to be mostly overlooked, a puppet master playing with strings behind velvet curtains. He was the sand at the riverbank, the load-bearing beams of a bridge; he was all that and more until the moment he decided that he’d had enough of that, actually, and it was time to go apeshit. 

This “apeshit” mode engaged in three specific situations. 

Firstly: during games. The look on opposing teams’ faces when Karasuno’s mild-mannered Captain marched out onto the court as a regular, and not just any old regular but a regular with a wicked set of serves, was always satisfying. (At least for Ukai. Takeda had a habit of clicking his tongue in some vague sort of pity for the other team.)

Secondly: when Yamaguchi perceived his teammates as not living up to their full potential. Tsukishima was the most common victim of heated lectures on team spirit and work ethic, though Hinata and Kageyama had caught a few themselves, along with a hapless first-year or two. 

Thirdly, and perhaps most notably: when Yamaguchi saw that one of his friends was being treated unfairly. He had zero tolerance for bullies, whatever shape they came in. Ukai had seen him go off on other students, teachers, spectators at games, and once, quite memorably, a referee. And while he wasn’t entirely sure what had happened between their new baby setter and the basketball team captain, he had noticed that the entirety of the basketball team now had Yamaguchi on the equivalent of what seemed to be a no-fly list. They scattered when they saw him coming. 

Luckily for Ukai, Yamaguchi did tend to give him about ten seconds of warning before these fits of impassioned justice occurred. It allowed Ukai just enough time to start planning damage control. He knew the signs well by now: Yamaguchi’s fists would clench, his mouth would firm up, and Ukai swore his eyes started to gleam with manic fury.

In fact—no, Ukai was certain that his eyes did indeed start gleaming with manic fury; he was watching them right now. On the sidewalk directly outside of his shop, Yamaguchi had engaged himself in a shouting match with three other boys around his age.

Ukai sighed and grabbed for his broom. 

When he opened the door, Yamaguchi was already mid-diatribe, one finger raised like a blade: “—stupid intolerant assholes, obviously you’ve never cracked open a basic biology textbook in your lives—”

“It’s not natural,” one of the boys protested, arms crossed over his chest.

“Not natural?” Yamaguchi hissed. “What isn’t natural is for someone to be as idiotic as he is ugly, but here you are!”

“Hey,” another boy interjected. “Are you insulting us?”

Yamaguchi rolled his eyes. “Oh, very well done. I see you’ve finally caught up with the rest of the class.”

“He is insulting us,” said the third boy in a tone of wonder. “Let’s get him.”

“Oh, try it,” said Yamaguchi, at the same time Ukai said, “Don’t you dare.”

All four spun around. Ukai, who actually had some degree of confidence in Yamaguchi’s ability to win a fight 3v1, nonetheless pointed his broom at the other boys. “You three. Yeah, you three. Go on, get.”

“But we didn’t start—” began the second boy mutinously.

“Do I look like I care who started it?” Ukai demanded. He didn’t. Care, that was. Yamaguchi could start all the fights he wanted and Ukai would still probably take his side. “I’m not going to sit here and let you put your hands on my kid. Scram.”

For a moment the three boys wavered, no doubt sizing up the competition, and trying to judge exactly how serious Ukai was; he jabbed the broom at them and they broke, retreating up the street with sullen expressions.

“Hmmmph,” said Ukai, dropping into a sitting position on the stoop and pulling two lollipops from his pocket. His latest yearly resolution was to quit smoking, as it was every year, but this time Takeda had gotten involved and was running the tightest ship imaginable. Every time Ukai even so much as thought about reaching for a cigarette, Takeda somehow popped around the nearest corner wearing the scariest smile Ukai had ever had the displeasure of witnessing.

Yamaguchi sat down next to Ukai with a gusty sigh, hanging his wrists over his knees. Ukai passed him one lollipop and stuck the other in his mouth. “What was that all about?”

“Stupid,” Yamaguchi grumbled. “They’re in Tobio’s class. Said some shit about him because they caught him kissing Shouyou behind the gym the other day.”

“Oh,” said Ukai. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come and broken it up, then. Should’ve let you get the old one-two in first, hm?”

Yamaguchi grinned. “Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of other opportunities.”

Ukai was certain there would be. Yamaguchi would make an opportunity himself, if need be, as Yamaguchi and Kageyama had an interesting sort of Captain-Vice Captain dynamic. Sawamura and Sugawara had been classic partners in crime; Ennoshita had served as the voice of reason to Tanaka’s voice of no reason. For their parts, Yamaguchi and Kageyama both held that they should each individually behave maturely—unless the other person was being threatened, intimidated, or otherwise harassed, at which point all bets were off. People seemed to expect such things from Kageyama, but not at all from Yamaguchi, which made witnessing the whole phenomenon infinitely more amusing.

Slowly, Yamaguchi peeled the wrapper off the lollipop. He seemed to change his mind at the last second, though, letting the sweet dangle from his fingers. Ukai eyed him, and in case he was experiencing any sort of unwarranted doubts about his actions, said gently, “Kageyama’s lucky to have you. You’re a good friend, Yamaguchi.”

It was a slow eternity before Yamaguchi leaned back on his hands and said, “Am I?”

“Well,” said Ukai, nonplussed, “where did that come from?” 

Abruptly, Yamaguchi stuck the lollipop into his mouth and anxiously crunched it to shards between his teeth. His shoulders hunched, and he was no longer the proud Captain of a powerhouse team, terror to bullies everywhere; he was just a boy. Ukai reached out and took the empty stick from between his fingers. 

Quietly, avoiding Ukai’s eyes, Yamaguchi said, “I’m quitting volleyball.”

Somewhere down the block, a streetlight flickered and went out. Yamaguchi tipped his head back, staring aimlessly upwards. “After I graduate, I mean. Not right now. I’m—it’s just not what I want to do with my life, you know? It’s fun! I had fun. And I have a team, and we’re going to go to Nationals, and we’re going to win. But after that, I want to go to college. I want to get a job. A normal job.”

Ukai thought of Kinoshita, who’d just called him the other day to tell him he’d gotten an offer with a transportation company. Azumane was in training for apparel design, last he’d heard. Ennoshita was going to med school. “That seems . . . perfectly reasonable to me, Yamaguchi.”

There was a quiet misery in Yamaguchi’s eyes when he finally looked over at Ukai. “But the others,” he whispered. “My year-mates—Tobio’s already being scouted by pro teams. Even an idiot can see that Shouyou will go far in the sport. Farther than anyone else has ever gone, probably. And Kei thinks he’s being slick but I’ve seen him looking at open tryout sessions for the Sendai Frogs. Hitoka will probably end up a manager at whichever university she chooses. They’re all staying in the sport, one way or another. I’m not. But they’re my best friends. And I don’t want to lose them.”

Ukai exhaled, reaching for the empty stick in his own mouth. He thought he understood. Yamaguchi was afraid that once he and the other third-years graduated, once they stopped seeing each other every day—stopped striving together for a shared purpose—that they would all drift apart. He was afraid of being alone.

And it was a fair fear, it really was, but—

“I’m sorry,” Ukai said. “But, kid. Uh. You’re being stupid.”

Yamaguchi’s face pinched in offense. “I am not .”

Ukai snorted. “Has Hinata ever shown that he is constitutionally capable of letting anything—or anyone—go, ever? Has Kageyama? Yachi is, if we’re being fair, but she loves the rest of you too dearly to give you up without a fight. She’s stuck with you lot this long, hasn’t she?”

“I suppose,” Yamaguchi said reluctantly. “But. I just. I don’t know. They’re all going on to do great things, I know it. And I’m . . . not.”

“I’m sure,” Ukai said, “they think the same of you.”

That, at last, silenced him.

Ukai shifted so he was mirroring Yamaguchi’s posture, elbows braced on knees. “It’s like this. Hinata had what, five other kids, on his team in middle school? And not a true volleyball player among them. Kageyama—well, you know what happened. Tsukishima ever only really had you, by his own admission. And Yachi didn’t have a club before you guys, either. She didn’t have a cause to care about. You’re afraid they’re going to leave you behind. But I think the rest of them are just as afraid of being alone as you are. None of you want to lose the others. But you’re Captain, Yamaguchi. You’ve gotten them this far. You’ll take them further. Wherever you go—wherever you end up, they’ll follow you. Not literally. But don’t expect to have your life to yourself. They’ve wiggled their way in there. They’re not about to let go now.”

The first tear spilled silently over Yamaguchi’s cheek. “I don’t want them to move on without me. It’ll—it’ll kill me. Inside. And I know I sound dramatic, but—”

“They won’t,” Ukai assured him. Rarely did he get to predict the outcome of anything with such certainty: games turned on dimes, advantage shifting as easily as the tides. But Ukai knew this as he knew that the sun rose in the morning. “They won’t. And you don’t sound dramatic. You sound like a person, Yamaguchi. Our friends are some of the most important people in our lives. I’d be dead in some ditch without Shimada and Takinoue, believe me. Don’t know how I got so lucky as to end up with those two bastards in my life, but I did. And I thank the gods every day for it, too.”

Yamaguchi brought his hands to his face, wiping away the single tear, scraping his hair back from his face. He laughed, the sound cutting through the night. “Guess you’re right. I’m just scared. I don’t want to be, uh, benched. You know, friendship-wise.”

“I am right,” said Ukai firmly. “Don’t know much but I know this. And none of this nonsense about being . . . friend-benched, or whatever. In that regard, you’ve been a starting player since you were sixteen. You’re deluding yourself if you think they’d be the same without you. You’re deluding yourself if you think they’d want to be the same without you.”

Yamaguchi smiled, watery. “Thanks, Coach.”

Ukai handed him another lollipop. He’d had the exquisite privilege of watching his players grow and change, these last three years. He’d seen Kageyama bloom like a flower turned to face the sun for the first time, genuine empathy bleeding out behind stone-faced compliments and awkward smiles. He’d seen Tsukishima learn to trust himself enough to care again. 

He’d seen Yamaguchi steady. He’d seen Yamaguchi dare. He’d seen Yamaguchi take slow step after slow step into becoming the kind of man anybody would be proud to know. 

“And if you’re really worried about it,” Ukai continued, “then you be the one to organize everything. The reunions, and the group chats, and the—face calls, or whatever. You lead. They’ll follow. You have them damn near conditioned, at this point.”

Yamaguchi laughed softly. “Yeah. Yeah, you know what? I think I will.”

He stopped for a moment, and stared at Ukai, and watching the realization creep over his face was like watching the storm break after a long summer of drought. “Oh my gods,” he said. “Oh my gods. I’m going to be stuck with them for the rest of my life, aren’t I?”

Ukai grinned past the lump in his throat. Yamaguchi was, in that moment, the youngest he’d ever been. He had his whole life ahead of him yet—the path he’d walk, but never walk alone. “You sure are.”

Yamaguchi stood and extended his arms over his head, stretching. “I’m gonna hold on,” he told Ukai resolutely, and Ukai swore he felt some part of the universe click into place like a cosmic puzzle piece had just slid home. “Not gonna let them get away from me so easily, wherever everyone ends up.”

Ukai stood too, and stuck his hands in his pockets. “They won’t know what hit them.”

“No,” agreed Yamaguchi. He took a few steps away down the street before turning back. “Coach?”

“Yeah?”

“Will—can you—”

“Yes,” Ukai said, knowing what he was asking. “I’ll hold on, too. What, did you think I was just gonna let the lot of you fuck off after all this? Kid, I’ve seen every one of you in tears at some point. I’m pretty sure I have Hinata’s address memorized, all those times I had to drop him off after games. I know exactly what Yachi’s allergic to. That sort of shit doesn’t just—go away.”

The last remnants of tension dropped from Yamaguchi’s shoulders. “No, Coach. I suppose it doesn’t. Um, I’ll see you.”

Ukai watched him leave, a tall figure in the deepening dusk. His shoulders were very straight. 

Takeda hadn’t told him, when he started this whole coaching business, about watching people leave. He hadn’t told him about the way you started to care about people. He hadn’t told him how much it would hurt.

“See you,” Ukai said softly. It was a promise.

———————————————————————————————————————

Ukai Keishin was not—and had no interest in becoming—a father. 

There was one exceptionally logical reason for this. 

For a man with no children, he already had quite a lot of children. 

Some of those children—now, some of those children had scattered to the far corners of the globe, sending Ukai pictures from sandy beaches and rain-washed forests and the sheer slopes of rocky mountains. Some of those children had never left the country to which they were born. Some of those children were loud, and some were quiet, and some were still learning how to smile on their good days. Some of those children had known no refuge but that of the court, recognized no family but that of the black-winged murder of their team.

But all of those children—every one of them, even the most peregrine and the most maverick among them—they were all coming home to roost.

Ukai sat at the front of his shop and waited. It wasn’t long before there was a knock at the door. Glancing up from the manga he’d been pretending to read for the past hour, he spotted a tall figure in a baseball cap lurking beyond the glass doors of the shop. It was almost embarrassing how quickly he set his manga down and stood, tripping over his own stool in the process.

“Keishin,” Takeda said from behind him, mildly. “Calm down. He’s not going anywhere.”

“No, he for sure is not,” Ukai said firmly, unlocking the door. 

“Hi,” said Kageyama, peering out at Ukai from behind a pair of shades that did nothing to obscure the large ALI ROMA logo on his jacket. Ukai pressed his lips together in a valiant effort not to smile. “Oh, sorry. Am I too early?”

“Not at all,” said Takeda, hanging over Ukai’s shoulder. “You’re just in time.”

Kageyama bowed and entered, shoving a package into Ukai’s hands as he did so. “It’s just something. Not a big deal,” he muttered. Upon opening it, Ukai found what looked to be an expensive set of spices.

“Kageyama—”

“I said it’s nothing,” Kageyama said, retreating behind a nearby shelf. Ukai would’ve gone after him except the door blew open and two more bodies tumbled in, nearly bowling him and Takeda over.

“Boys,” said Takeda reproachfully. That tone of voice was as effective at twenty-five and twenty-six as it had been at sixteen and seventeen; Hinata and Nishinoya straightened up with vaguely guilty expressions and chorused, “Sorry, Sensei.”

“But I totally won,” Nishinoya added under his breath, bending over to rest his hands on his knees.

“Senpai, you cheated,” said Hinata. “Tobio, tell him.”

“I saw no cheating,” said Kageyama, who’d been in a perfect position to watch Nishinoya try and trip Hinata in the final five yards. 

It was to the accompaniment of Hinata’s indignant screeching that the door opened again, admitting an apologetic Azumane. “So sorry about that! Yuu, what have I told you about racing people in public spaces, it never ends well—oh, Sensei, Coach, it’s so good to see you—”

Ukai grinned and went to put the spices in the back. When he returned it was to Kinoshita and Narita trying to muscle Ennoshita into pushing open the door all the way. 

“Chikara, no one cares what your hair looks like, most of these people haven’t seen you in over a year, and you think they’re going to be looking at your hair?”

Ennoshita, who’d grown up like a brick shithouse, was resisting them both admirably, hands braced on the doorframe.

“You can say that because you have no hair, Kazuhito. You wouldn’t understand the struggle.”

“Okay, wow, rude, way to hit a man when he’s already down—”

Ukai pulled the door open the rest of the way and all three fell in. 

“Er, hello, Coach.”

“Hello,” said Ukai, and promptly moved to the side to allow Nishinoya to barrel past. 

“HISASHI! I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN SO LONG! HOW ARE YOU DOING!”

“I’m here too,” said Narita. 

“Who said that?” said Ennoshita sweetly, dodging both the immediate retaliatory punch and the retort of oh my god who ever let you be Captain .

Yachi was the next person to swing open the door, to general delighted outcry. Tsukishima tried to slip in past her in the confusion, but was brought up short by a grinning Yamaguchi, who took the opportunity to announce: “You know, Kei canceled on his boss to make the train here, no matter how much he looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.”

“Shut up, Yamaguchi,” said Tsukishima in the tones of the grievously betrayed, and stomped over to join Azumane in the corner. Feeling just a bit bad for him, Ukai caught an overly-excited Hinata by the arm and redirected him into a conversation with Ennoshita about his physical therapy work, promising he could ask Tsukishima about his most recent game later. 

At the brief lull in commotion, Ukai took a breath, his hand reflexively seeking Takeda’s at his side. It was late, and though Ukai’d already turned every light in the shop up to its full brilliance he swore the space was brightening as he watched, the ceilings expanding upwards practically before his eyes. 

“This is nice,” said Takeda.

“Yes,” said Ukai, unwilling to say any more lest the tears he could already feel pressing at his eyelids slip out. It wouldn’t do to cry in front of his kids; they’d never let him live it down. He’d made the mistake of letting his emotions get the better of him just the once at Nationals, and half the team had promptly set his face mid-sob as their phone wallpapers for the following month. 

The next knock rattled the door frame in its hinges. Someone shouted, “Oh my gods it’s unlocked ,” and Ukai got a very brief glimpse of silver hair and a blinding grin before Sugawara was already halfway across the shop. 

“Come say hello to your old senpai!” he crowed. Kageyama dutifully submitted to Sugawara’s pinching hands, allowing his cheeks to be caught between the junction of finger and thumb. Hinata, Yamaguchi, and Kinoshita lined up eagerly behind him. Tsukishima and Azumane looked at each other and took a step back in solidarity. 

“I wish I could say it’s because he’s been drinking, but he’s entirely sober,” Sawamura sighed, and pressed something into Ukai’s hands. Ukai looked down and laughed when he saw the tablets of extra-strength acetaminophen, labeled “For Headaches”.

He was slipping them into a pocket when the door opened one final time, admitting the Tanakas. Shimizu—she would always be Shimizu to Ukai—waved a hand, smiling so wide it made her eyes crease at either side. Tanaka entered behind her, taking his wife’s other hand with a casual ease that made something euphoric split Ukai’s chest open from the inside.

These kids .

These kids; this impossible group of dreamers, who’d once looked up at a mountain they’d been told all their lives was unscalable, and decided to try it anyway. These kids; who’d reached and struggled and bled in the hopes of something better, something grand; who’d turned their faces to the sky and sworn to shake the stars themselves. These kids; the team that had sprung from concrete, and the flock that had become a murder. Ukai had known and coached and loved many teams now, teams that had gone to Nationals and teams that had churned out Olympic players, but no team was like this team, the first team. They were special to him. They made him feel twenty-six and unconquerable.

“How about a picture?” Takeda asked, to general agreement. There were some hairy moments considering the truly insane height range boasted by the group, but Ukai ended up somewhere in the middle, with Narita on one side and Yamaguchi on the other. Turning on the timer, Takeda rested the camera on a nearby shelf and rushed around to insert himself on the side. A half dozen hands reached out and yanked him closer. 

Someone’s arm draped over Ukai’s shoulder, even as someone else—Ukai thought it was Yachi, sweet-voiced and radiant—leaned forward to whisper, “Thanks for having us, Coach!” When the flash went off, Ukai was already smiling.

Ukai Keishin was not—and had no interest in becoming—a father. It was the greatest gift of his life that he’d somehow become responsible for fourteen children regardless.