#it also went on for longer than i thoughtit would

[revasserium]

Prompt 7 with ushijima? Thanks!

send me a number and a character, and i’ll write you a drabble

7. momentumushijima 

the world moves, and it moves, and it moves. and we are powerless to stop it, though sometimes, it seems like if we try hard enough, stretch beyond our limits, sometimes, we can grasp the inevitability of the world by it’s tail and pull it back, stall it for just a moment. 

you stare at the back of his head, wondering what could possibly be going on in there, until he turns to hand back the stack of worksheets, and almost hits you in the nose with them. 

he mutters an apology, eyes lingering on you for just a moment to make sure you’re alright. it’s the first time he’s spoken to you, not really directly to you, more like at you, but still. you flush and nod, squeak out some kind of answer, and take the stack of worksheets from him, almost tossing it behind you in your hurry to busy yourself with something. 

“how did you get that answer?” 

his voice sounds like a shot of whiskey, deep and warm and smooth and really, you’ve never even had whiskey properly before (okay, so there was once when you snuck a shot out of your dad’s liquor closet and almost choked), but isn’t that what people always compare deep voices to? whiskey or chocolate or coffee. 

but you think whiskey works best, because for a moment after, you’re left punchdrunk with the depth, the tingling warmth burning it’s way down your chest till it pools in your stomach and you’re left shivering in its wake. 

“uh…” you glance over at his quiz before looking back at your own. 

“i… oh, it’s in the passage –” 

you shake yourself and settle back into the flow of time, the minutes and seconds tick-tocking right by, the world spinning and spinning without regard for how dizzy you might get sitting next to him, trying to keep your own body from being pulled into his orbit, the raw magnetism of him alarming, scintillating. 

he’s so earnest that it hurts, the first time he tells you he likes your hair, he says it as if stating fact, as if the words he says doesn’t have the power to shake the foundations of your very world, and it isn’t till he asks why you’re staring at him that you realize you are. 

“th-thank you.” 

“you’re welcome.” 

and that was that.

he gives you other compliments too, varying in degrees, but always the same in that simple, declarative intensity. 

“you’re very organized.” 

“thank you for always helping me.” 

“you’re very smart.” 

“your phone charm, it’s nice.” 

you blush, “yeah, well,” you hold up your phone, the tiny little volleyball charm dangling off the end, “makes sense you like it though.” 

“do you like volleyball?” he asks, peering down at you over your weekly worksheets. 

(the story of how you’d become the ushijima wakatoshi’s official tutor is a story better told at another time, perhaps with actual whiskey shots involved.) 

“i – yeah, i do.” 

you don’t tell him that you’d only started watching because of him, or that you’re now much more invested in this sport than you planned to be. you don’t tell him you looked up the application for being the volleyball team’s manager, or how much work that would entail before deciding that being a tutor was already difficult enough without another extracurricular. 

“do you come to our games?” 

you shrug, pressing your lips. 

“yeah. sometimes.” you smile, resting your chin on the heel of your palm. 

“you’re amazing.” 

he nods, as if satisfied. 

“thank you.” 

not a hint of doubt, no hesitation. like fact, like truth. 

and then, a few weeks later.

“come on a date with me.” 

“hm?” you scribble a note into the margin of one of his short answer essays before looking up, unsure of if you’d heard right, because surely, he didn’t just ask you on a date. 

surely. 

he blinks, unwavering. 

“would you like to?” 

“like to…?” 

“come on a date with me.” 

“oh.” 

you blink back. 

(date? date.) 

the word sounds strange coming from his lips, it sounds like a word from a borrowed language, like “schadenfreude” or “macaron”. 

“okay.” 

“good.” 

he looks back down at the papers scattered on the table between you. 

“you were saying, about the short answer.” 

“huh? oh – yeah. it’s fine, just you referenced the wrong line in the passage.” 

the world pauses, watches, as he reaches forward to tuck a strand of your hair behind your ear, his hand dropping after back to the surface of his desk. 

your cheek tingles where his finger had grazed against your skin and your mind fizzles till it’s completely blank. 

“sorry. i didn’t mean to interrupt.” 

you look back up at him, eyes wide, bright, beautiful, he thinks, though he keeps that particular compliment to himself, at least for the time being. 

“it – it’s okay.” 

you stare at the homework for three whole seconds before finding your train of thought again, forging on with the explanation, hoping he doesn’t realize just how pink your cheeks are. 

he does. 

later, when he asks you to meet him on saturday at the gymnasium after practice, you forget that the entire team will be there. you forget that it isn’t just him, and you, and the spinning world. 

there’s a whole crowd of people milling by the doorway by the time he steps out of the clubroom, hair touseled and still a little damp from the shower, his skin flushed from the recent practice. 

“let’s go.” 

he doesn’t look back at the mass of undulating bodies trying to peer around the door of the gym, or the fact that tendou is openly gyrating with anticipation at all the ways he could tease ushijima about this during the next practice. 

“where are we going?” 

he takes a moment. 

“to be honest, i haven’t really thought that part out.” 

your footsteps fall into tandem next to his, and it’s the first time you’ve ever heard him sound like this. still simple, truthful, but with the smallest hint of uncertainty laced into his words. 

you glance at him with a smile. 

“that’s okay. we can just go get icecream or something.” 

“icecream,” he says the word as if tasting it for the very first time. 

you shiver at the thought. 

“sure.” 

and he should have known – it was the middle of the summer, the heat the most unforgiving of mistresses. he should have thought it through, but then again, he’s never been too good at planning where volleyball isn’t involved. and even when it is – it’s always been one point at a time. 

he watches you lick at the soft-serve, his own pistachio flavored scoop pleasing, but nothing to write home about. 

you glance at him, your cheeks going pink, and he has half a mind to tell you just how strange the sight makes him feel, the knots in his stomach twisting tight, the usually steady rhythm of his heart skidding till it skips. 

the world moves, and he moves with it, unthinking as he usually is when it comes to you, because when it comes to you, his body becomes a language he’d forgotten he knew how to speak, the motions flowing from him before he can quite process it; he reaches out to wipe your lip of a speck of sticky icecream, bringing it to his own lips. 

“it’s good,” he says, because that’s the truth. 

you’re frozen as you watch him, even as your icecream sits melting in its cone. 

“it’s taro,” you say, because what else could you have done? 

he nods, “maybe i should get that next time.” 

your press your lips. 

“would you like some more of mine?” 

he considers your offer, and the most logical part of him knows what you mean. and he is nothing if not a logical creature. but sometimes, the universe shifts in a specific direction, and we are powerless to stop it. and he’s moving before he can stop himself, blame it on gravity or the laws of bodies in motion, the confines and freedoms of three-dimensional space. 

the irrationalities of time as the dimension we all move through – he falls through the minutes and seconds, his thought fizzling out like a magic trick. 

his mouth meets yours at an awkward sort of angle, and you make a tiny sound in the back of your throat that sounds kind of like a squeak. he takes a moment to register that it’s not a bad sound, that you’re not pulling away, before instinct takes over and he’s tugging you towards him with his large hands cupping your cheeks. 

and later, he might blame it on the heat, or just the pull of the sweetness on your lips, even though he’s never had a sweet tooth or anything like it himself, but you’d tease him for being so hasty regardless. 

and later, when tendou asks him what he ended up doing on his date, he’d answer “icecream”, to which tendou would raise an eyebrow, staring at him as they go through their warmup stretches. 

“and how was it?” 

ushijima considers, and for a brief moment, tendou (and the four other people who are eavesdropping nearby) wonders if he’ll actually give a normal, human answer. 

their hopes are shattered, however, when he turns back towards tendou with a straight, contemplative look on his face, and simply says – 

“delicious.”