#this is fine sudfhgsdfg

[pontevoix]

SEND ME A SHIP AND I’LL TELL YOU: holiday edition  tsukishima + yamaguchi  @pridewon

who wears the ugly holiday sweaters

see, the thing is that yamaguchi wears ugly holiday sweaters without realizing that they’re ugly. it’s not an every day thing, & he’s not the worst dresser in the world —- he usually dresses fine, to be honest. but sometimes yamaguchi chooses comfort, & he’s confident in his choice & then

he meets tsukishima for lunch, & tsukishima for the life of him cannot figure out where the hell the sweater came from. he’s certainly not seen it before, & he doesn’t remember anyone going clothes shopping recently. it’s a mystery ! but on those days when yamaguchi chooses confident comfort, tsukishima really starts wondering if yamaguchi might be colorblind.

he starts wondering, & then yamaguchi dresses fine the next day so . . . maybe it was a fever dream.

it wasn’t. yamaguchi always swears that he’s had the sweaters for long time, that he’s worn them before. it’s a mystery!

admittedly, one of yamaguchi’s next door neighbors has been swearing she’s going to move. she’s been saying this for three years & consequently has been passing off some of her ex-husband’s old sweaters to yamaguchi pretty consistently. yamaguchi doesn’t say no to free clothes if they’re warm so . . .

hm.

who picks out the holiday movies and who makes the hot cocoa

by holiday movies, they somehow end up watching really bizarre horror films that have a seasonal premise. idk if you’ve seen trailers for r-hated horror films about santa clause or whatever? they’re watching those things. that or extraterrestrials try to wipe out humanity on a holiday. they sometimes watch it in english or in a language without subtitles & try to understand the premise of what’s happening without understanding what’s going on in the movie.

even outside of holiday season, tsukishima likes watching movies/television that way sometimes because it does… help him learn the languages he’s working on, but he usually keeps subtitles on when he’s feeling educational.

that being said, yamaguchi usually picks the movie & makes the hot cocoa because tsukishima does not want to stand up from his position on the couch. this is the price he pays. tsukishima surrenders his right to choosing the movie &

yamaguchi has an astounding ability to find really awful movies. amazing!!

who starts the snowball fight

neither. yamaguchi & tsukishima get caught up in the middle of someone else’s snowball fight. because yamaguchi is gremlin, he’ll use it as an excuse to commit snow ball fight & next thing you know ? tsukishima’s rib is damp with cold, & he finds this extremely unfair because he gets cold easily & yamaguchi does . . . not. comparatively, at least. tsukishima’s retaliation usually comes in the form of a huff. sooner or later, he’ll whip off his gloves when they’re close to going inside —- just long enough that his fingers can turn to ice & then he’ll press his ice fingers against the back of yamaguchi’s neck.

tsukishima is not a fan of snowball fights. yamaguchi knows this & is not apologetic.

disappointingly, yamaguchi doesn’t jolt at the touch of cold fingers as much as tsukishima would imagine. he just sorta… snickers. you know. like someone who is making tsukishima’s life much more difficult.

who drags the other under the mistletoe

yamaguchi knows that tsukishima doesn’t have the patience for mistletoe or anything like that. at the same time, yamaguchi sorta . . . rotates between liking the idea of trope-romance & then realizing he doesn’t really care about it. but either way, mistletoe doesn’t really matter unless it’s for flustering tsukishima.

they really only see at bars or a house-party or something. & yamaguchi somehow has ?? a sixth-sense?? for seeing things like that? tsukishima really is fine going his whole life without realizing that there is mistletoe remotely in his presence. somehow, yamaguchi gradually (over the course of fifteen minutes) manages to navigate himself & tsukishima beneath the mistletoe. he literally just does this so he can elbow tsukishima to alert him to their location & snicker as the tips of tsukishima’s ears turn red because

this is the third time that this has happened.

don’t kiss under the mistletoe. it’s just an easy way for yamaguchi to tease tsukishima, but they aren’t really a pda duo.

who decorates the house they don’t so much have holiday decorations out & about as they have winter things set up (as mentioned in another post — the kettle, the space heater, a heating blanket, warmer socks). they have one decoration though, as i’ll detail below. however, yamaguchi struggles periodically with odds & ends purchases. he isn’t materialistic & doesn’t have too much clutter except for . . . the holidays, which seem to make him a little anxious about what acknowledgement he’s supposed to give to whom. because of this, seasonal purchases start littering their apartment. for instance, ingredients for cooking & baking start waiting on the counter. yamaguchi gets tsukishima to start writing letters & postcards early with him. there’s a freaking bag of dog food by the door because yamaguchi agreed to dogsit next week? seasonal cat toys are a plenty, so those start littering the floor. but honestly . . . most of the seasonal purchases are either snacks or scented. they’re running out of handsoap? yamaguchi chose some pine-scented soap. they got candles, babes, & they don’t know why.

they don’t even burn candles that often because they keep forgetting to get matches or a lighter.

tsukishima’s seasonal decorating is cleaning when they start getting frazzled by the holiday season.

who hangs up the ornaments on the tree

no tree, technically. but. they do have an actual tree shaped thing - it was a seasonal impulse buy that yamaguchi had made not with tsukishima, but with akiteru. it’s just a little plastic lamp that looks like a tree, & it’s actually quite cozy & quite ugly. neither yamaguchi or tsukishima can figure why they still have it, but they whip it out annually.

who cooks christmas dinner

benefits of knowing one another since childhood ? it’s much easier to integrate one another into family meals or festivities. when they’re in the sendai area, they are obligated to make the trip down to see their families. & honestly . . . if yamaguchi’s mother isn’t visiting her sister, then they both manage to have dinner with the either’s family. tsukishima’s mother usually just puts her sons in charge of prep work. yamaguchi is not held to this chore, which he is both sheepish about & delighted about.

tsukishima flicks some water at yamaguchi when his mother isn’t looking.

beyond that ( if they’re having a private meal ) ? they’ll cook together, which basically just means that yamaguchi will check that tsukishima’s food is actually…. seasoned passably.

who sings holiday music

yamaguchi is that you ??? singing in the shower ?? when you think that tsukishima is out & about ??? have no fear. when tsukishima can hear you singing your holiday tune in the shower, tsukishima really starts playing the same song on his phone from outside the bathroom so that yamaguchi can hear it & sing with accompaniment.

once again, tsukishima may hum holiday music but it’s usually weird sad indie sounding holiday music.

unless he’s humming beethoven’s 9th, which gets played a lot around town near the new year.

if they have any holiday traditions

somehow yamaguchi has coerced tsukishima to host a holiday dinner when they can ??? don’t ask tsukishima, he doesn’t know how it happened. it’s just a potluck thing that they hold after doing a neighborhood volleyball game, since yamaguchi keeps up with the neighborhood fairly frequently.

their dumb little plastic tree thing is a tradition sdfg & it’s so unnecessary &

they like to do a jigsaw puzzle together around holiday season. it’s something that tsukishima did sometimes with his brother when he was younger & now it’s just . . . making a comeback. they get a little competitive about it somehow, which is bizarre because it’s like… they have any way of measuring who did what.

yamaguchi also hoards pictures a lot more blatantly than tsukishima so he’s always trying to take pictures of tsukishima candid which backfires because then they don’t have any pictures of them. tsukishima counters this by sending a really close zoomed in picture of yamaguchi’s face to a group chat of friends that says:

’ yamaguchi says you’re all uninvited from the holiday dinner. ‘

the zoomed in yamaguchi picture is a new tradition.

finally, they actually sit down & write out what they need to do in the holiday season. it’s the one time they’re organized about things lol

who would start a food fight during baking

yamaguchi can bake. tsukishima cannot ( sort of ). they do not have a food fight while baking is already messy enough — neither of them feels particularly thrilled at the concept of cleaning up more than they have to.

however, they’re dirty little hypocrites.

… which is an exaggeration, but while they don’t have a food fight when yamaguchi is baking . . . yamaguchi does continually throw popcorn or nuts at tsukishima when tsukishima is feeling antagonistic & pretends that he cannot hear yamaguchi’s request that they watch a show yamaguchi has already seen because if they do watch something yamaguchi has already seen?

yamaguchi will spoil it accidentally.

. . . they clean the couch later but they accidentally find almonds in the cushions & yamaguchi shrugs like “it’s ur fault for ignoring me 👀👀”

who would get drunk off of eggnog

points once again to kahlua!tsukishima sdfg. that aside, tsukishima and yamaguchi have different drinking patterns. neither drinks a lot, but yamaguchi’s coworkers egg him on to have a drink with them after work. he’s still settling into his work & deciding how he feels about his job & the workplace environment he’s chosen so . . . he goes. yamaguchi’s not the biggest beer fan; he doesn’t hate it, but when he comes home, he’s a little - “i’ve done my time.” meanwhile, tsukishima doesn’t drink out often. he says that drinking out makes it a little more difficult to regulate what he needs to when he’s in-season. which is true . . . but also he much prefers the idea of having his cozy drink at home when he doesn’t have to anything else except brush his teeth & sit on the couch.

with that being said, yamaguchi doesn’t actually often have eggnog unless they’re at a holiday party. tsukishima does, & he’s having a grand ol’ time.