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Yamaguchi Tadashi prized himself on his compassion and wit. He was quick to help, but never let anyone treat him like a pushover. He always knew the right thing to say, and often times had a shark-worthy comeback on the tip of his tongue—although he was smart enough to know when to reel those in. He was kind, and sincere, and good at important things, like teaching Kageyama Japanese, or calming Hinata down when he got too hyped up or pretending not to see his little brother’s toes peeping out from underneath the bed when they played hide-and-go-seek. He was a people-pleaser, and he didn’t think that was a bad thing.
Except for right now. When he wanted most to be. Because although Tadashi was good at many things, he wasn’t good at the one thing he needed most.
It wasn’t as though Tadashi had forgotten his best friend’s birthday… it had just sort of snuck up on him between volleyball practise and English quizzes and dealing with that weird thing happening between Kageyama and Hinata that they were all trying to ignore.
And now it was September 26 and now he had no time because Tsukishima’s birthday was tomorrow and he hadn’t done anything.
So he did the only thing he could do.
He paid Ennoshita with a coffee and promise to be on clean-up duties for the next week to call an emergency volleyball club meeting.
Hinata was currently trying to explain some weird dream he had had the night before to Kageyama, and from what Tadashi could hear, it involved volleyball and something about giant… mecha suits? Even if he had been listening, he wasn’t sure if he would have been able to understand it. Hinata kept jumping around, making loud sound effects with his dramatic explanatory movement. Kageyama’s face kept folding in onto itself as his eyes followed Hinata’s every movement.
“But… there’s no way they’d allow gun arms on the court.”
“I know, Kageyama, but it was a dream.”
“And why do you need jets in your feet? You can jump high enough already.”
“I know but—are you even listening to what I’m saying?”
On the other side of the club room, Tanaka was showing Noya something on his phone. Every few seconds they would burst into laughter, then they would immediately halt and glance around the room and—you know what? Tadashi didn’t want to know.
Only a couple of first years had shown up, and they were the only ones behaving: with their legs crossed, they sat expectantly in the center of the room. Tadashi offered them a smile of gratitude, which they enthusiastically responded to.
Ennoshita clapped his hands together. “Okay! Looks like everyone is here.”
Hinata shot his hand up. “Tsukishima isn’t here!” he pointed out. Ennoshita nodded.
“That’s kind of the point.”
Noya frowned. “Hey, captain? Didn’t anyone tell you that it’s rude and very, uhhh, undiplomatic,” he glanced to Tanaka for approval at his word choice, and Tanaka nodded rapidly, quietly clapping his hands together, “to not include club members in club activities?”
“Yeah!” Tanaka joined in, stomping forward and pushing a finger into Ennoshita’s chest. “And I thought you liked Tsukishima! Who’s to say what you’d do to people you don’t like, huh?!”
He was trying his scary face, but all of them had seen it so often over the years that it came off like a puppy nipping at your toes.
Ennoshita kept his face staunch and flat. “Tanaka. Do we have to have that talk again?”
Tanaka’s shoulders slumped and one at a time, he ran his hand down his opposite forearm, as though he was pushing down imaginary sleeves. “But we’re just playing,” he pouted.
“Okay. And I accept that. Now will you let me explain?” He nodded and sat back down. As he did, Tadashi heard Noya mumble, “I thought you looked really cool.”
Ennoshita motioned to Tadashi and he cleared his throat before speaking. “Right. Well, ah. Tomorrow is Tsukki’s birthday, and I want to do something special for him, but I can’t quite do it on your own, so I was wondering if you’d like to help?”
Hinata lifted his hand up again—which was kind of pointless, because he spoke without waiting for someone to address him anyhow. “I want to help, but don’t you think you should confess on your own?”
The entire world stopped spinning. Tadashi felt it halt, and he almost flung himself over so he could play dead and have to be transported to the hospital so he wouldn’t have to ever—ever—respond to that.
“I—what—I--- who said anything about confessing?!” Tadashi exclaimed, his voice rising in pitch. And—dammit, he realized his mistake immediately: he hadn’t denied it at all.
“Idiot!” Kageyama hissed, sending a smack to Hinata’s arm. “You can’t say stuff like that!”
“Why not?” Hinata retorted, spinning to face Kageyama with his hands firm on his hips. “There’s no reason to be embarrassed about confessing your feelings!”
Tadashi could think about a hundred reasons, and from the look on Kageyama’s face, so could he. Faithful Ennoshita stepped in before it could go any further.
“Do we have to go run some laps to get all this excessive energy out, or are you going to listen?”
“Yes,” Kageyama and Hinata replied in synchrony, while Tanaka and Noya groaned. Ennoshita shot the two second-years a look and they immediately silenced. He nodded at Tadashi to continue.
“Like I was saying, I need your help. I want to—” Inhale deep and let it out slow. “I need you to help me bake a cake.”
The idea had been born a couple weeks ago, when Tadashi had been lying with his head hanging off the end of Tsukishima’s bed. They had been talking about nothing and everything, Tsukishima’s shitty music playing in the background (sorry, Tsukki, but it was shitty—if you were going to listen to techno, at least listen to something with words!).
“I told my mom I didn’t want to celebrate my birthday this year,” Tsukki had said out of nowhere. Tadashi knew by now that meant that it had been eating Tsukishima up on the inside for awhile.
Tadashi rolled over so he was right-side up on his stomach. “Oh?”
Tsukki looked at Tadashi for a moment too long, in the way that made him feel at once naked and exposed, free and brilliant. “Yeah,” he finally said, then spun away. “I’m getting too old for it anyhow.”
But Tadashi knew. He knew in the way Tsukishima refused to meet his eyes when he said it, and in the way his fingers had twitched on his desk. He knew from the long gazes and the sweet brushes of skin. He knew that what Tsukishima really meant was that he refused to spend his birthday with anyone but him.
Which meant Tadashi had to make it perfect.
Which meant he had to learn how to bake.
He had spent the last week digging for recipes through his mom’s cookbooks, and then ultimately online. It meant digging around the house for spare change before begging his sister to loan him some money. It meant collecting ingredients as best as he could, but even then, he had no idea where to start or what to do.
He didn’t get baking at all. Why were there so many different types of sugar? Weren’t they all the same? What did it mean to “cream” and how was that different from “mix”? When would he know the cake was ready if the recipe didn’t tell him?!
He wanted to pull at his hair or scream or just throw the ingredients at Tsukki and tell him to make his stupid strawberry cake himself.
But he cared too much—he cared so much his heart ached and his stomach twisted with anxiety at the mere thought of messing this up and having to see the frown of disappointment that would appear not on Tsukki’s lips, but in his eyes.
With a day left and nothing else to do, he had turned to the only people he knew he could trust to help him out no matter what.
What a mistake.
“Welcome to the Karasuno Volleyball Baking Club!” Hinata clapped his hands together and a burst of white clouded Tadashi’s vision. Hinata cackled as Tadashi coughed.
“What—what did you do?”
“It’s flour!” Hinata exclaimed.
Tadashi looked down at his uniform which now looked like a dalmatian coat. Hinata smiled sheepishly. “Sorry,” he said. “I spilled it earlier and got covered trying to clean up.”
“You spilled flour? Already?” They hadn’t even started mixing ingredients yet. Tadashi had only just finished bringing in everything they would need. At least everyone was on time because they had exactly two hours and fifty-three minutes before Tsukishima was scheduled to appear, and Tadashi didn’t know what he would do if they weren’t finished on time. Cry, probably.
Kageyama, Tadashi was unsurprised to note, had hair closer to grey than black, coated in a fine sheen of flour. Tanaka was leaning against the counter which Noya sat upon, kicking his heels against the cupboards underneath. Ennoshita was popping what was probably an advil into his mouth over by the sink, and Yaichi was notably absent: when Tadashi had approached her to ask for advice, she had visibly paled and rambled something about being the worst at baking ever. Tadashi had laughed and said he doubted that, and that he was probably significantly worse, and for some reason that had made her turn a peachy shade of pink. But, despite her absence, she had made a card to go with the cake, complete with a picture of a dinosaur in a birthday hat and a selected few volleyball players in chibi form.
If Tadashi was into girls, he had no doubt that would have been the moment that made him fall head-over-heels for her.
A loud crash brought Tadashi back to the moment. “It’s not broken!” Nishinoya exclaimed as he hoped down from the counter. “I told you, it’s not breakable!”
Ennoshita was already on the scene, rushing over and snatching the rest of the plated from Nishinoya’s grasp. “They’re non-shatterable not non-breakable!”
Tanaka rolled his eyes. “Captain, those are the same thing.”
“No they’re not!”
“But look!”
Tanaka went to grab the plate and Ennoshita pulled his hands back out of the way. “No more touching!”
With a long and slow inhale, Tadashi made his way to the counter and into the chaos. He opened his recipe book to the marked page and began the preparations. He set the oven and placed the ingredients in the order they would be used and tried to ignore the way Hinata kept leaning into Kageyama, and how Kageyama couldn’t seem to allow himself to be more than two steps away from Hinata at any given moment.
Tadashi wasn’t sure if those two were worst on the court—where they argued and bickered—or off the court—where they still argued and bickered, but now with feelings. A chill went through Tadashi as he considered what people thought of him and Tsukishima: did they find them disgusting with the way they gravitated towards each other, regardless of where they were or who they were with? Did anyone else notice the way Tsukishima’s eyes shifted when Tadashi drew near, and how Tadashi always knew what to say to draw them both out of their shells?
Not now, Tadashi. Get a grip. You have a job to do.
“Okay.” He clapped his hands together, pulling attention back to him. “Let’s get baking.”
“Oh, oh, can I lick the spoon?!” Hinata exclaimed. With a grin, he tipped his head back to gaze up at Kageyama. “Mom always lets me lick the spoon.”
“You have to bake the cake first,” Ennoshita pointed out.
“But I call it.”
“That’s not fair!” Noya interjected. “The one who does the mixing should get to lick the spoon.”
“Then I’ll do the mixing,” Hinata retorted.
“I think it’s only fair that the person with the most upper body strength do the mixing.”
Tanaka flexed his arm muscles, as though everyone here didn’t already know he had two “guns” named Slayer and Daisy (the names come from a long story with an inconclusive ending that Tadashi still wasn’t certain he followed). “Move aside, losers, I got this.”
Tadashi cleared his throat. “Uh. We have to measure things first.”
“Right!” Noya swept up beside him and grabbed the flour bag which was, already, partially empty. “Dad taught me a cool trick for measuring flour, you just—”
Instead of unfolding the top of the flour bag like a normal person, Noya had grabbed it from the middle, and a tad too enthusiastically: the top shot open and flour flew out, a white puff devouring Noya’s face. Tanaka immediately fell to the floor, clutching his sides, and Ennoshita turned his grin into his shoulder.
“You can’t hold it there,” Hinata said sagely, as though he wasn’t already covered in flour.
“You want to be a ghost?” Noya asked, flicking his flour covered fingers Hinata’s way. The younger boy let out a squawk and ducked behind Kageyama.
“Ghosts aren’t real!”
“I saw a ghost once,” Kageyama said and Hinata gasped and demanded to know all the details.
This… might not have been the best idea.
But no mind! Tadashi felt the time dripping away, and he really didn’t have much to spare. He pulled back his hair the best he could, tied an apron around his waist, and began to do what he should have done by himself all along.
It was just—
Okay, maybe Tadashi was scared of making the cake by himself, because if he messed up, it would be all on him. But it was more than that. Making the cake with the team wasn’t just for baking support, or moral support, or support of any other kind. It was about… well. It was about how Tsukishima deserved the best, and that meant friends who loved him enough to come together for him, and maybe he couldn’t see that, and maybe he would never see that, but maybe, just maybe, this cake would be enough for him to blink open his eyes.
A body slid up next to his. “Need some help?” Ennoshita asked. “I’m not much of a baker, but I am an excellent chemist.”
Tadashi huffed a laugh. “Please. Want to help me measure everything out?”
He gave a nod, and side-by-side, the two began to fill bowls with the required ingredients. The moment of peace was shortlived, however; it didn’t take long for the others to stop flicking flour and realize something was happening.
“Kageyama can bake!” Hinata grabbed the cookbook and pushed it this way. “Okay, Bakayama, let’s give them our special expertise.”
Kageyama’s brow furrowed. “Since when can I bake?”
“Now is a great time to start!” He shoved the book in his face. “What does it say?”
“It says idiots named Shouyou should stop bothering their taller friends.”
“Shut up, it does not!”
Before Tadashi could steal the book back, he heard the clinking of bowls. He spun around and watched as Tanaka dropped an empty bowl in the sink. “That! What was that?!” he demanded.
Tanaka shrugged. “White stuff.”
“White… it’s all white stuff! What did you do with it?”
“Poured it into this!” Noya announced, and Tadashi watched in horror as he dumped the contents of that bowl into another.
“No!” Tadashi reached towards it but it was too late. “You can’t just start putting things together like that!”
Noya blinked at him. “What? It’s all going to be mixed into the same thing, right?”
“It says here to mix the dry ingredients together,” Kageyama piped up from behind the book that Hinata still held in front of his face.
Tadashi felt the tension fall from his shoulders. “Oh.”
“See? It’s fine! Wait. Eggs are dry, right?”
The following twenty minutes were some of the most chaotic and stressful moments of Tadashi’s life, but somehow he survived them without a heart attack or murdering anyone—although Hinata came close when he got mad at Kageyama for mocking his height and threw an egg his way. He had splattered against the fridge and slowly dripped down as they all watched in some mixture of confusion, excitement, and flat-out exhaustion. Hinata was banished to clean-up duty and the revered spoon was given to Tanaka who had mixed the bowls probably a lot more intensely than he should have.
With the cake in the oven, Tadashi glanced around at what remained of the room that had once been a kitchen. There was batter splattered on the counters, the floor, and possibly in Noya’s hair. Ennoshita had retreated to the corner, where he was blowing up balloons as what Tadashi could only assume was stress-relief. Hinata was furiously scrubbing the fridge, shooting dirty looks towards the others, who were talking and laughing under their coat of flour and sugar and—
Fuck.
They still had to make the frosting.
Tadashi didn’t know how to do that.
He didn’t know how to do that.
“Kageyama!” He rushed over to their setter and shook his arm. “In the recipe book. Did you see a recipe for icing?!”
Kageyama stared blankly down at him. “Was I supposed to be reading that?”
Tadashi spun around. “Ennoshita do you—”
But their captain had already clocked out. “Nope,” he replied automatically, not glancing up from the balloon he was tying into a knot.
“Noya, you’re fast, right? I need you to look online, probably that would be fastest, and—”
Tanaka waved his hands widely through the air. “Yama? You said icing?”
“And make sure we have the ingredients for it and—oh, what do you even need for icing?!”
“Yama?” Tanaka’s face appeared inches from his, and Tadashi let out a yelp and nearly fell back. “I know how to make icing.”
He blinked, then blinked again. “Say that again?”
Tanaka shrugged, rubbing at his shoulder. “I can make icing. Onee-chan really likes frosting when she’s on her period.”
Noya crinkled his nose. “You’re ruining her erotic appeal.”
“Good, she’s my sister!”
Tadashi waved his hands around: partially to gather their attention, but partially because his anxious energy had to find somewhere to go. He was too nervous to glance towards the clock. “Hi? Icing? Please?”
“Right!” Tanaka threw one arm up and into the distance, and the other arm he pointed in the same direction but bent at the elbow. Tadashi supposed he was trying to pose like a gladiator, or something? Maybe? Before he could question it, Tanaka dropped his arms and smacked the table. “We need sugar! Lots of it!”
“Oh, I have that.” Kageyama pushed a large bag of sugar across the counter. “I would have more of it, but some idiot keeps dipping his fingers into it when they think no one is looking.”
“I am not!” Hinata snapped back. Kageyama leaned down so their faces were parallel, and although Tadashi couldn’t see it, he could tell by Hinata’s shiver that Kageyama was grinning.
“I didn’t say your name.”
“Tanaka, the icing?” Tadashi repeated and Tanaka nodded about a dozen times. He grabbed the sugar and dumped it—without measuring—into a bowl, then poured in a splash of milk and what looked like way too much butter. “Are you sure you—”
“Yep!” Tanaka replied, his hand moving a mile a minute as he began to stir. “I do this all the time!”
A splatter of icing hit the fridge and Noya grinned. “Faster, faster, faster,” he began to chant and to Tadashi’s horror but not surprise, Tanaka complied.
More sugar-butter-milk mix (because that definitely was not the texture of frosting) began to splatter the counters and plat onto the floor. Suddenly, right when Tadashi thought the tornado was sugar was about to consume them all, Tanaka stopped, dropping the bowl onto the counter where it spun once then stilled. “Done.”
Tadashi peered into the bowl and… it didn’t look horrible. Not as smooth as he remembered it being, but it didn’t look wrong. He dipped his finger in and then plopped it into his mouth. He felt his eyes widen and he rapidly blinked twice. “Not… bad. Not bad!”
Tanaka beamed. “I told you!”
“Let me try!” Noya hip-checked Tanaka and dipped his own finger in. “Mmm. I like that. Hey Shou! You gotta try this!”
Hinata turned towards his name. Instead of being a normal, sane person and passing him the bowl, Noya grabbed the spoon and tipped back the top of it.
Tadashi must be developing some sort of psychic intuition, because he saw exactly what was going to happen before it did. “Nishinoya, no—!”
But it was too late. He let his finger go, and the glob of icing on the tip of the spoon flew across the room. Hinata, valiant as ever, jumped for it with his mouth open wide, but Noya’s aim was off. Instead of landing in the middle blocker’s mouth, it landed in their captain’s hair.
Ennoshita turned very, very slowly. Tanaka bent over in laughter and Noya grinned his sweetest, shit-eating grin. “Sorry, Ennoshita! That was meant for Shouyou.”
Ennoshita took a slow step forward. “Oh? Well then, so was this.”
Tadashi couldn’t follow what happened next, but it must have gone something like this:
- Ennoshita swiped his hand along the flour-coated counter and flicked whatever he could in Noya’s face
- Tanaka’s laughter proved too much, for suddenly he was coated in flour and butter too.
- Hinata tried the frosting, and, enjoying it, spun towards Kageyama with the spoon so he could try too.
- Hinata misjudged everything and smeared icing right across Kageyama’s face.
And then, the room flew into chaos.
Icing was flying, accompanied by shrieks of laughter and playful threats. Tadashi watched his friends and teammates run around the kitchen and he felt redder and redder by the second. Tsukishima was going to be here any second, and they had promised to help, and—
You know what? Enough.
He stormed over, dancing his way through the disaster, threw open the oven, and tossed the cake on the counter. Was the cake done? Maybe. Did it matter? Not anymore.
He spun around. “You know what?” When no one paid him any mind, he cleared his throat. “HEY.”
Their eyes all turned towards him, their bodies caught in a freeze frame. When Tadashi spoke, his voice was level, but his fists shook against his thigh. “I—I asked for your help today, because you’re my friends, and I wanted to make this special, but you—none of you took this serious. I asked for one thing, and you only made a mess of everything! I help each of you—” He turned towards Noya. “I’ve helped you with your English every week, and I hate English! And you—” He turned towards Ennoshita. “I help with plays, and setting up and tearing down, and I let you unload everything on me, and I’m not even vice-captain! And don’t forget how I listen to Hinata wax poetic about Kageyama’s thighs every single night.”
Beside him, a mumbled, “You talk about my thighs?” followed by a fast “shut up!”
“So why can’t you just do this one thing for me, to show Tsukki how much I—”
“Show me what?”
If Tadashi had been boiling before, he had evaporated into nothing now. As slow as he could, he turned around to the tilt of Tsukishima’s head as he lowered his headphones to around his neck.
“Tsukki!” Tadashi squeaked. “You’re early!”
He shrugged and took a step forward. “Not really. What natural disaster happened here?”
“We baked you—” came Hinata’s cheerful voice. Tadashi turned to him and quickly shook his head, because there was no way Tsukki was getting anywhere near that mess that could barely pass as dessert.
But it was too late. Kageyama was already plating a piece and dropping it down onto the counter with a small clatter. “A cake!”
“Oh?” Tsukishima quirked an eyebrow in such a way that Tadashi couldn’t tell if he was intrigued or just amusing himself. “What kind of cake?”
“Uhhhh…”
“Strawberry,” Tadashi whispered. “Or, uh, it was supposed to be.”
Tsukishima’s eyes locked on his as he brought the fork to his mouth. Under his gaze, Tadashi felt tulips bloom in his chest, even as he saw black thunder clouds rolling in. He wanted to flinch, or run away, as Tsukki’s mouth closed around the mouthful of cake. He chewed slowly, thoughtfully, and then his entire face twisted as his nose crinkled together.
“Did you put sugar in this?”
“You mean this?” Kageyama asked, lifting a bowl that was still filled with granulated crystals. “I thought it was for the icing.”
And he couldn’t help himself any longer.
Tadashi wrapped his arms around his middle and let out the loudest laugh he could.
Tears sprung into his eyes as he laughed and laughed, and soon his voice was joined by a melody of others. He laughed and laughed until he could do barely more than wheeze and he felt a warm hand on his back that felt a lot like a thank you.
It was that night, the finale to Tsukishima’s birthday, when Tadashi finally had him alone.
After the laughing fit that swept across them all, they each tried a piece of the cake (absolutely disgusting, was the consensus) then tossed the rest into the bin. They cleaned the best they could and got meat dumplings on the way home. It wasn’t as special as Tadashi had wanted the day to be, but he had caught Tsukishima smiling, and that had been magical enough to settle his poor heart.
And now it was them in Tadashi’s room, freshly changed into pajamas and settling for bed.
But it wasn’t quite midnight yet.
“Tsukki,” said Tadashi from where he sat with legs folded on his bed. Tsukishima glanced up from the book he was reading. “I’m sorry your birthday sucked.”
Tsukishima let out a huff of air and flipped the page. “That’s one word for it.”
The sinking of Tadashi’s heart must have been audible—he swore, in that moment, it was entirely drowned—because Tsukishima immediately met his gaze again, closing the book quietly in his lamp. “Yama—Tada—Tadashi. No. It didn’t suck, alright?”
Tadashi felt his lips flicker up. He knew Tsukishima was lying, but he also knew the difference between a malicious lie and a kind one. “Okay. Hey, are you ready for your real birthday present?”
A smile graced Tsukishima’s lips. “But what could ever be better than that cake?”
Tadashi smiled back and stood up. “Close your eyes, okay?”
His feet padded away, and then returned, stopping right in front of where Tsukishima sat on the floor. He sat down on his knees in front of him, scooting close so their knees were nearly brushing.
There was a warmth between them, growing by the second, and then Tadashi’s voice broke the silence. “Open.”
He watched the pale eyelashes flutter and watched Tsukki’s cheeks bloom into colour. Tadashi, for his part, held a perfect little cupcake, icing swirled tall with a strawberry plopped right in the center. When Tsukishima’s curious eyes lifted to his, he shrugged. “I had a back-up plan.”
Their eyes never left, not even as wax from the lit candle began to drip. They were only a breath away, watching the flames flicker in each other’s eyes, and simultaneously, their mouths twisted into the most delicate of smiles.
Later, Tsukishima would tell him that the cake was good, but not dearly as sweet as the taste of Tadashi’s lips against his own.