Third Time Lucky?

Chapter 1: Falling

The first time that Tsukishima Kei's heart had broken it had fractured his entire world along with it. He had been nearing the end of elementary school and his brother had been everything to him. A hero, a guardian, a friend. Akiteru was all Kei had ever wanted to be. Until he wasn't. He'd betrayed Kei's trust, the one who trusted him inexplicably, and lost Kei because of it. In just one look. Across one room. At a single person. Kei lost everything that day. Kei changed on that day.

He became more closed off, more cautious, more cynical. Kei's sarcastic nature and quick wit became his shield that protected him, as well as the only thing that people saw if they couldn't be bothered to stick around long enough to look past it. He took a step back from his interests, wary of becoming too attached and being let down by putting too much expectation into uncertainties. He distanced himself from everyone, except the one boy who refused to take a step back.

The second time that Tsukishima Kei's heart had broken it had hurt with a pain so incomparably worse than the first. This time was slower, giving Kei time to notice how far gone he was and how hopeless any attempt to stop it would be. It had also given him time to hope that the outcome could be different from what it inevitably would be. He was also given a choice. Not the choice to escape before it was too late - it was already far too late - but the choice of whether he alone would be heart-broken or he would drag two others along with him.

Kei had been in love with Yamaguchi Tadashi since before he even really knew what love was. (Not to say that he understood it now.) He'd known Yamaguchi since elementary school: since before he changed. Yamaguchi had been the boy who refused to take a step away despite how Kei changed, because he was still the same in the ways that mattered and Yamaguchi saw how scared and how alone Kei was without Aki. Kei realised that he liked him as more than a friend in their second year of middle school. Around the same time that he realised that he wasn't attracted to girls at all and Yamaguchi wasn't attracted to boys.

Yamaguchi fell in love easily. The girl who lived across the road, the girl he sat next to in assembly that one time, the captain of the softball team, the girl who lent him a rubber in maths, the girl, the girl, the girl. He would have a new 'love' every couple of months and he was bad at hiding them but was too awkward and had too little self-confidence to do anything about them. He would pine annoyingly from afar, sneaking glances, doodling names in margins and occasionally sighing dramatically. Quiet, tired sighs, but dramatic sighs nonetheless.

In his pining, oblivious, almost self-absorbed way, Yamaguchi would rant to Kei about his 'loves', not noticing how his every word put another crack on Kei's already fragile heart. He would lament how cute they were, how nice, how friendly: everything that Kei wasn't. He would sigh in resignation because 'why would she ever want to be with someone like me?'.

Kei would get annoyed by this because he couldn't understand why his best friend was so nervous – there wasn't a single reason that he could think of for any of these girls to turn Yamaguchi down (except for one that had had a boyfriend already). But he also hoped that Yamaguchi's lonely heart would look at him for once; that he could be the subject of those sneaked glances, his name doodled in the margins of notebooks, his presence the cause of a quiet, dramatic sigh. This changed when they met Yachi Hitoka.

Yamaguchi was completely over his current crush- the girl who sat next to him in homeroom- the second he saw Yachi trembling nervously as she stood next to Kiyoko, who was introducing her to the team. Kei was sure that this would just be another of Yamaguchi's 'loves' until he noticed that the obviousness, awkwardness and quiet, dramatic sighs were mutual. Their obliviousness seemed to be too. (He had the suspicion, however, judging by some of the conversations he'd had with her, that Yachi was not as oblivious as she seemed and was probably just creating new and elaborate ways that hers and Yamaguchi's lives could end should she ever choose tried to even acknowledge that her feelings were mutual. God forbid that she should ever think to act on them.)