#i used up my last braincells trying to figure out how to properly convey

[hayaku14]

thinking about old and grey kaishin, comfy in their living room, lazing on the sofa, empty mugs and a plate of half-eaten cake left on the coffee table. kaishin sitting so closely, so easy. kaishin invading each other's space as natural as breathing. kaishin basking in each other's presence on a quiet sunday night.

kaito softly smiling and staring at the increasing laugh lines on shinichi's face. shinichi gently brushing away kaito's greying hair and tracing the countless crinkles in his eyes. shinichi sliding down his hand into kaito's neck, scratching on a ticklish spot to pull a giggle out of him; to see more of those beautiful lines that litter his face.

kaito giggling as he takes shinichi's hand off his neck. kaito staring reverently as shinichi's hand shakes in his. kaito looking back at a time when everything was still new and unfamiliar; a time when shinichi's hand shook the same way in his but for a different reason. kaito looking now at shinichi's hand, trembling all the same but they are also calloused and wrinkly, the hold on him sure and steady. kaito closing his eyes as he puts shinichi's hand on his lips. kaito leaving a lingering kiss that still leaves shinichi red on the cheeks.

kaito holding shinichi's face in both hands and peppering him with kisses. a kiss on the nose, a kiss on the cheek, a thousand kisses on the worry lines he caused on his forehead. kaito sliding off shinichi's glasses to give him a firm but chaste kiss on the lips. kaito pulling away with that same teasing smile all those years ago. shinichi pouting and red and so achingly fond pulling him right back in to give him a proper kiss. a little nibble, a little tongue. a little kiss to remind him whom he belongs to, even after all this time.

kaito and shinichi pulling apart breathless and smiling. eyes bright with mischief, cheeks cherry red, and still so utterly in love.

[mochhio]

Karasuno’s last party

Hey hey hey! Cookies! 

This is my gift for @theorangecourt‘s anniversary event! I can’t believe it’s been a year minus 1 month

I hope you like this! It’s 2.5k words of Karasuno fluff and being dorks (plus it ended up being a balm to cure recent manga induced injuries what do you know). 

Basically Karasuno’s third years are graduating and the team wants to do something for them! So what’s better than throwing a slumber party?

After Nationals, Karasuno’s third years are left with no more excuses to continue being on the team. Through February and March, the four of them are too busy with their exams, job hunting, college applications, and all the responsibilities that convey being a senior student in high school a step away from graduating. It’s difficult enough for them to squeeze some time to meet their underclassmen in the halls. Suga likes to visit the 1st years’ classes while they’re on lunch break, Kiyoko texts regularly with Yachi offering advice (she knows Yachi would be too embarrassed to “inconvenience” Kiyoko like that), Daichi tries to keep his distance slightly from Ennoshita since he doesn’t want it to seem like he doesn’t trust Enno with the team. The one who has slightly more time to come by is Asahi, he even manages to stay and practice sometimes whenever Take-chan doesn’t berate him for it.

No one doubted that the new starting team would be as good as how it had been with the third years, but their absence is felt. Not so much as how they play in court (though obviously they still have a ways to go before getting properly in sync) so much as the hole they left in the team dynamics. Everyone misses them, some more vocally than others, and it's such a waste that they were taken from the team so abruptly without even a proper goodbye!

Hinata tells Kenma all of this during one of their usual text convos, he would really want to have a bomb-ass party so they can send off their senpai properly! He knows Tanaka and Noya would help him, although maybe the rest would be a little reluctant to comply with any of their crazy plans. Still! He wants the team to do something special for them! And that’s when the idea pops, how about they have a training camp!

He tries to be sneaky and tell Kageyama first but he's soon caught by the rest of the first years. Yamaguchi and Yachi think that's a great idea! Though Tsukishima is soon to destroy any of his enthusiasm. "We're almost at the end of the year, where could you fit in a training camp? Plus, the third years are too busy as is". Hinata's solution is to host the training camp after school ends duh! And in his moment of bravado to prove Tsukishima wrong they go to Ennoshita.

"It's ridiculous." 

"It's genius!"

"In fact, it is ridiculous." Ennoshita turns down Hinata's idea without a second thought. "Tsukishima's right, even if we could fit in a camp the third years wouldn't be able to participate."

Not officially at least, so Hinata hangs on to that, "But what about a non-official training camp? The weekend after graduation?" That doesn't sound too bad honestly, and if it's not official Ennoshita has no saying in denying it and so, they go to Ukai and Take-chan. After some initial reluctance, they manage to convince them and so, the only thing that's left is to get the third years to agree. Fortunately, they agree to it! It sounds like a good idea and the best way to celebrate.

Since it’s not official they all have to chip in with a little contribution, even the neighbors association and family cooperate to make the whole thing possible. They booked rooms in the same inn where they stayed for the golden week, Ukai brings snacks and drinks from Sakanoshita and Shimada also gets stuff from the supermarket. Akiteru offers his old TV and console for them to play and watch movies, Takinoue lends them a karaoke set and helps set it (with the inn’s approval ofc) and Saeko brings proper food from her job.

They have a slumber party! They play Mario Kart, Daichi and Tsukishima are the ones always fighting for the first place. Usually, when he plays at home with his family since Daichi is the big bro he’s used to utterly destroying his little siblings in any and all videogames. Subsequently, even if Akiteru was always a big softie with Tsukki, as any respectable older sibling, he had no mercy when it came to games. So for both Tsukki and Daichi, it feels like something personal and somehow this petty rivalry ends up in the whole team dividing into two teams for the rest of the night. Older siblings vs younger ones, with the only children being picked in the end as if they were forming dodgeball teams. 

So we have the Older sibs team comprised of Daichi, Hinata, Asahi, Kinoshita, Noya, Narita and Kiyoko. And the younger sibs: Tsukki, Tanaka, Yamaguchi (he also had to suffer Akiteru’s gamer bloodthirst), Suga, Ennoshita, Kageyama and Yachi

For the first few rounds after they started playing in teams the YS were winning everything. Not even 20 minutes into it Kinoshita had to stop Noya from trying to leap at Tsukishima and get rid of his smug grin and snarky remarks. It’s getting late and someone is going to end up getting thrown a real banana to their head so they decide to start with karaoke early. Both because they don’t want to be too much trouble for the owners but mostly to have everyone at peace and far from using their controllers as actual projectiles. Also, they do have to wrap up everything early since Take-chan managed to get the school gym open for the next day so they can have one last practice as a team.

Somehow they manage to turn karaoke into a competition and despite Asahi being timid as usual, the pure raw of Noya (with Kinoshita as his second vocals), feral Suga, Hinata’s...well all of him (it seems like he injected pure sugar into his bloodstream) is enough to beat the others in any screaming competition. “It is not a screaming competition” Daichi tries to settle them down with no luck. Also, who would’ve known Kiyoko and Narita knew the lyrics to all of the power rangers intros huh. 

On the other hand, Tsukki outright refused to sing, Kageyama trips over his own tongue and they found out how tragical his timing is outside of volleyball, Yachi looks like he’s going to get a heart attack and drench her clothes in sweat. That is until Tanaka tells her they should do a duet. “But I don’t even know this song!”, “Don’t worry! It’s screamo so just let it all out” and MAN does she let it out, they won that round no doubts. Other than that Ennoshita is pretty mellow, and Yamaguchi does have a nice voice but this is a war and he’s going to need more than that to win.

Now they’re 1 to 1 and they definitely should go to sleep now but they can’t leave the score like this. So they try to settle it with a quick and simple game of charades. Oh, but how foolish were they.

Since this is technically a celebration for the third years the team decides it’s only fair to have them write the papers down. They use movies, shows, obscure references no one will guess courtesy of Suga, the team members themselves, anything they can think of.

Surprisingly it is not as chaotic as it could be, somehow they get so focused during their rounds to start bickering with the other team. The MVP definitely is Yachi, from the first action the player does she starts shouting any and all the words she can think of, it would sound as if she’s making random guesses but since she has so much attention to even the smallest of detail her guesses end up being accurate more times than not. Tanaka does pretty much the same but his guesses are way off, although he makes up for it being incredibly expressive whenever his turn to act out the charade comes. Another scary addition to the YS team is Ennoshita who is able to guess every single movie before the player in turn even finishes acting it and though no one other than Suga himself gets his own references since some of them are cinematographic Enno manages to hold a candle to those. 

Somehow Tsukki gets too caught up in the whole thing that he forgets to wear his usual uninterested façade and plays seriously, he even gets angry when Kageyama fails to guess most of the references. “That’s milk? Cheese? A cheeseburger?”, “IT’S TOAST YOU ABSOLUTE MORON”. Needless to say they lost that round by default but watching poker-faced Tsukki get genuinely worked up is worth it. When Yamaguchi gets ‘Kageyama’ he ruffles his hair over his eyes to look emo and brooding, puts on a scowl and starts making tossing noises. For a hot 10 no one talks, not because they don’t know what the word is, but because they know and don’t want to laugh so loud in front of Kageyama himself. Which is really difficult since Kageyama himself is completely oblivious and genuinely trying to figure out what Yamaguchi is hinting at until Tsukki snaps and shouts “IT’S YOU, DUMBASS”. The team can’t contain their laughter as Kageyama replies with an undignified “Huh?”. “Being around Kageyama has rubbed off on Tsukishima” Hinata quietly tells his team but Tsukki’s ears are sharp as ever and he throws his stare as daggers to Hinata.

For the other team is easier, at least in the sense that there’s no incessant bickering most of the time. But it doesn’t help that the team’s collective braincell is mostly concentrated in the other team. Whenever someone gets Suga’s cards come up the one who reads it spends more time struggling to get what it even means than actually acting it out. “But you were there when he wrote them!” “I didn’t have a clue back then and you expect me to know what it means right now?”. Asahi is better guessing than acting out, though his volume leaves much to be desired and Noya ends up being his megaphone, although he shouts everything and it is barely intelligible. He’s also the ultimate hypeman, cheering everyone up and clapping everyone's backs when they have to stand up to act. However, he’s too focused he ends up scolding the players when they’re not being clear or enthusiastic enough. Hinata is pretty good at acting out but he lets out to many onomatopoeias when he’s supposed to be silent. At first they were giving him penalties but poor thing did it so often they just decided to cover his mouth with a sleep mask whenever it was his turn. 

Despite Daichi’s confidence, he’s not exactly what you would call hip with the kids so he stays silent with a deep frown like even understanding the words themselves presents a struggle. That’s just excuses though, whenever he’s in the place of acting he spends more time thinking about what to do than doing it. “BUT YOU WROTE THAT ONE????” “I thought it would be difficult to the other team! I didn’t take a second to genuinely think about how to act out air salonpas!”. It doesn’t help either that he likes to point at stuff which is against the rules, and Suga is quick to let him know by making loud buzzer sounds from his side of the room. The job of guessing is relegated to Kiyoko, Kinoshita, and Narita. Each of them has their strong points which balance each other, still, more than one time they ran out of time because they started arguing in the middle of a charade about what it could be instead of just shouting it like any other normal person! 

Overall! The team that managed to keep it together better was...

...

....

.....

The younger siblings.

Hinata feels both Tsukishima’s and Kageyama’s insufferable stares, he instinctively turns to them and witnesses as their faces twist into matching disgusting grimaces, he also catches a glimpse of slight grins in Yamaguchi and Yachi’s faces. Suga comes up to the other three years and tells them to pick up their slack! How is it that all these kids could beat ‘em but he does admit that it would’ve been difficult if it had only been up to him. Noya is kinda bummed but he’s quick to get over it and bring the other two second years to congratulate the other team! He high fives his bro and Suga and pats all the first year’s heads (despite Tsukishima’s reluctance). Narita sighs fondly at the scary 1st years and Kinoshita gives everyone a thumbs up. Noya comes up to Ennoshita and gives him an enthusiastic slap on the back, “Good job Chikara! as expected from our captain!” Everyone falls silent.

The tension is so thick it could be cut up with a knife, no one dares to break the uncomfortable silence, least of all Ennoshita who looks so mortified he might faint at any moment.

Finally, Daichi is the one to step forward and he moves until he reaches Ennoshita grips his shoulder with a firm hand. “Yeah, the team is in good hands.” 

Somehow that feels like a punch to Ennoshita’s gut and he moves his face downwards as faint sobs leave him. Just like that, one after the other, quiet sobs can be heard throughout the room. Tears dampening cheeks but never quite reaching the ground. They’re sad tears, happy tears, tears born from frustration and relief and longing, shed for the regrets of the past and the vast unknown that is the future but most importantly they are being shed at the present moment. No one acknowledges them, but no one really needs to. During the past three years Daichi, Kiyoko, Asahi, and Suga have shed lots of tears for different reasons and they know that they’ll continue crying for as long as they keep on fighting. 

These waterfalls are not dampening the evening, quite the opposite, they’re the perfect conclusion to their high school career. The four of them helped rebuild this team from the ground up, each of nurturing in their own ways. They all have regrets and things they would’ve done differently but seeing right now their wonderful teammates and everything they’ve achieved together they can have closure and come to terms with saying goodbye and trusting the fruits of their hard work to the next generation.

Eventually, the cryfest stops and even though they try to joke to lighten the mood the 14 of them are left exhausted. They try to clean up some and get ready to take a quick bath and get to sleep.

The next day starts on a better note, they’re all excited for their last practice as a team and vigorously fill up their stomachs before giving it their all.

They warm-up and practice serves as always, or better said as ‘in the old times’. They have enough people to go 6 vs 6 and so they play as many sets as they can. Suga teases them, Daichi tells them to cut their slack, Asahi encourages them and Kiyoko supports them from the sidelines. 

They lose track of which team ends up winning, especially since they kept switching members every few sets but who cares about that.

They got to play like they always wanted to, giving it their all, as a family.