Ace of Hearts - Haikyuu || Short Stories || One Shots || Creative Rambles

Such (a) Dic(k)tion || Tsukishima Kei

There are some things you can discern about people from the very first moment you meet them. Like, you can tell how much a person values themselves, and the way people think of them, based on how often they clean their hair or how honest of a person they are based on a smile.

The first time Mori Satoko laid eyes on Tsukishima Kei she knew he was a dick.

But maybe he was a dick with more to offer than just his flaccid, unfavorable personality.

It had taken Satoko nearly 10 months to find anything redeeming about the tall, walking salt shaker and, even then, the discovery had been purely accidental.

She had walked into the gym on a mission to find Hitoka-san to give her the notes from a class she missed the day before due to club activities. The meeting between the two honors students had been brief and littered with one sided, over-zealous appreciation - to the point where Satoko was forced into accepting an invitation to an upcoming practice match with the promise of free dinner at the end (since Hitoka was far too busy helping the team prepare for nationals to spare any other time for a thank you).

That game against Date Tech was probably the first time Satoko saw Tsukishima ever put effort into something and it was both incredible and frustrating. Without wanting to, she suddenly became interested in him - wondering what he could accomplish if he put his all into something and bemoaning that the cocky shit actually had something he was good at.

Satoko knew better - she really did - but when the game ended, she couldn't resist poking the bear.

"I like the way you insult your teammates in just the right way that it motivates them to spite you," she said walking straight up to him as the briefest glimmer of interest passed over his face. "It's really kind of clever."

Did this short, unkempt bookworm really just see right through him?

"Oh, so you like me," he questioned, his tone without a doubt teasing. It was a lame comeback and they both knew it.

"Never mind, you aren't clever at all," she responded flatly before turning on her heel and exiting the gym.

Honestly, Satoko hadn't meant to start anything. She had briefly given into a faint interest and thought that would be it, but after those two small comments, Tsukishima had made it his personal mission to piss her off.

That brief lack of self control propelled her into a little more than two years of biting words, flippant comebacks and possibly the strangest friendship she could have imagined for herself - stuck between a boy who let everyone walk all over him and a titan who tore everyone around him down.

In the face of her plans to leave behind her responsibilities of Yamaguchi protector and as that tall asshole's salt-talk translator, fate laughed wholeheartedly.

Without even talking to each other, the three of them had applied, been accepted and enrolled at the same university, thus tying their futures together for at least another four years. (Though, honestly, Yamaguchi and Tsukishima had spoken at length with each other about their academic futures, Satoko had been purposefully vague about her options, which had come back to bite her.)

Which is how, in the midst of their second year at college, the three found themselves walking together back to their dorms, after a particularly long lecture about supply and demand, talking about their weekend plans to binge bad romantic comedies together - or, at least, Yamaguchi and Satoko were. Tsukishima was trailing behind them, hands in his pockets and headphones around his neck, looking at the sky and trying not to roll his eyes at his excitable friends.

They'd barely made it two minutes into their walk before a girl in a sundress jogged up to them, calling to Tsukishima, with her long brown hair blowing behind her. She grabbed at his sleeve gently, pulling him away from his two friends and whispered to him, leaving Yamaguchi and Satoko to wait nearby.