treehouse - alex g., emily yacina . minor nsfw
for the very first time, monday night after volleyball practice, which was as normal as usual, y/n and ushijima walked home together.
the team shouted and called and made suggestive remarks to their friends. y/n jokingly glared over her shoulder at the boys she had learned to love as of late. to her side, ushijima sent very real and very menacing glares at his teammates, having known that the probability that most of them weren't entirely joking was a lot higher than he was comfortable with.
recently, ushijima was struck by a sense of doubt.
after all that kawanishi said, ushijima had begun to wonder how real his feelings really were. of course, he's not going to pretend like it wasn't her looks that drew him in in the first place. but it felt like more than that now.
ushijima had known almost from the start who she really was. the anxious and tiny girl that confessed to him at the end of his second year. and at first, ushijima wasn't all that interested just because he had no care for dating at that time. but y/n was mousy and insecure, and with the way he'd been at the time, he thought that she was pathetic.
but now... since her first day, she'd proven to be anything but. her confidence wasn't baseless like the kind that he hated. the knowledge that she retained, both academic and volleyball-wise could sometimes be marvels to behold. she was a natural leader, something that ushijima admired a lot about people, and as much as he couldn't see a reason for the trait in the first place, he found that y/n was as kind as she was beautiful. she had a sense of humor, one that made him smile secretly to himself.
it was just a shame that it took something as shallow as physical attraction to make ushijima realize it. there's nothing about her now that made him even slightly regret his feelings. it seem like she changed from when they first truly met, but maybe ushijima just hadn't had the chance to get to know her. or rather, he had never taken the chance.
as ushijima became less and less hyper focused on nationals as he grew more and more confident, he realized how lonely he'd been throughout the day. his father had been long gone, his mother was busy with her business trips and too distracted to call, and he'd always be an only child. ushijima had friends but they weren't the kind of friends that would be together forever, no matter how much some of them might want to be. but ushijima knew what relationships could do. he knew how they look, and what went on.
his idea of relationships were only ever what he'd read, but recently ushijima had been thinking up his own fantasies.
ushijima wanted to hold her hand to class. once they graduate, he could hold her hand in public, too. ushijima never imagined it before, but now almost all he thought about was kissing her. whenever she bit her lips while taking notes or watching through plays at practice, his vision would completely cloud.
there had been a moment where he was so distracted that a volleyball almost gave him a concussion. he was fine, luckily, but y/n had a flurry of words for him after, and ushijima was just as entranced there, too.
ushijima was sure that no matter how much he hated how the other guys at school stared at her, he'd look at her the same way.
ushijima wanted to be with her, but all these doubts made him question how much he deserved it.
-
monday night, they began to work on his living room floor with papers and notebooks and pens scattered around ushijima's glass coffee table. they collaborated with a shocking anount of ease, and they were able to work out the script for the project before the night was over.
