beauty-abstraction

[beauty-abstraction]

Title: The Best Ending

Pairing: Tsukkiyama

What you’re getting yourself into: confessions, first kiss

Synopsis: Yamaguchi finally gets Tsukishima to play a game with him, gay panic ensues

“Hurry up, Tsukki!”, Yamaguchi whined. “That’s rich coming from you ” Tsukishima replied, an obvious jab at the fact that he is usually the one waiting due to Yamaguchi’s near-constant penchant for running late. “Sorry Tsukki!! I’m just so excited that you finally agreed to play this game with me! It has been out for months now”, said Yamaguchi. “I would hardly call me losing a bet ‘agreeing to play that with you’” Tsukishima said sarcastically. “To be fair, I still have no idea why you bet against me in the first place! Do you not believe in my epic athletic abilities?” Yamaguchi replied with a teasing tone.

The bet was on whether or not Yamaguchi could get 5 service aces during the practice match. In all honesty, the real reason that Tsukishima bet against Yamaguchi was to give him something to focus on other than his nerves. Also, Yamaguchi was just so excited about his new game, and the bet gave Tsukishima the opportunity to cave to Yamaguchi’s puppy dog eyes without admitting defeat.

“It’s not that I don’t believe in you, it’s just that I do believe in the other team’s ability to get the ball up” Tsukishima said jokingly. “Whatever,” Yamaguchi scoffed, “Let’s go! There is an otome game with our names on it!” Tsukishima smiled to himself at Yamaguchi’s excitement before zipping up his bag and following Yamaguchi to his house.

For reasons that Tsukishima would never understand, Yamaguchi adored otome games. Where Tsukishima found them cheesy and disgustingly cliche, Yamaguchi found them sweet and interesting. Yamaguchi would often go into rants about how the character archetypes played into the overall narrative in each game and were decidedly not as cliche as Tsukishima found them to be, thank you very much. Despite Yamaguchi’s love for this genre, Tsukishima has never actually played one of these games, or watched someone else play one, preferring to just listen to Yamaguchi rattle on about his most recent playthrough during their lunch break.

After showering and eating dinner with Yamaguchi’s family, they retreat to Yamaguchi’s room where Yamaguchi reads off the synopsis of the game as well as the basic descriptions of each romanceable character from the promotional material.

“I’ll probably start with this one,” Yamaguchi says, pointing to a standoffish character with glasses, “the kuudere character route is usually the easiest for me to get the good ending on.”

“Kuudere?” Tsukishima asked, confused.

“A kuudere is a character that seems apathetic and cynical at first, but as you get to know them and gain their trust they show that they actually really care and that their personality is a facade they keep up to protect themselves.” Yamaguchi helpfully explains. “Their route always ends up being the cutest anyways, so we should definitely start there.”

Tsukishima tries (and fails miserably) to not think of the implications of this ‘kuudere’ type being the one that Yamaguchi finds the cutest while Yamaguchi boots up the game and the campy theme music comes blaring out of his laptops’ speakers.

The rest of the night is spent with Yamaguchi playing his game and Tsukishima desperately trying to pay attention to anything but his own racing thoughts. But the only girls that Yamaguchi has previously expressed interest in were nothing like this stoic character on the screen. In fact, there is only one person in Yamaguchi’s life that really fits that description… and that person is currently in full blown gay panic mode next to Yamaguchi on his bedroom floor. Then, to make matters worse, Tsukishima’s brain unhelpfully reminds him of the fact that Yamaguchi has mentioned playing otome games with all-male romanceable options as well. What does this mean, if it means anything after all? Does he like men? Women? Both? Neither? Or does he just play both types because they provide a different gaming experience? He looks up from the screen and studies Yamaguchi’s face for a bit, thankful that he is too engrossed in his game to notice the attention. Yamaguchi’s face is cutely scrunched up in concentration, his teeth nibbling his lower lip as he decides what dialogue option would be best. Tsukishima realizes that he has been staring perhaps a bit too long and quickly jerks his head in the other direction.

Unfortunately for him, this is around the same time that Yamaguchi pulled his attention away from the screen to see Tsukishima’s reaction to the cute line that the character just said, seemingly oblivious to Tsukishima internally screaming at himself for being so gay and in love with his best friend.

“Awww Tsukki! You like them too? That line they just said was just too cute!” Yamaguchi says excitedly, unintentionally misreading the situation. Tsukishima quickly reads the line on the screen and panics when he finds that it is just as cliche as he thought it would be. I mean, who writes this stuff?? More importantly, how is he going to play this off when his two options are admitting that he has a big, fat, stupid crush on his best friend or pretending to be attracted to some boring 2D character from a cheesy otome game? Rather than choosing the more logical option #2, Tsukishima decides to childishly give Yamaguchi the silent treatment while dramatically pretending to not hear him. This method seemingly works as Yamaguchi just giggles, rolls his eyes, then turns his attention back to the screen, dropping the subject for now.

After another hour or so of Yamaguchi playing and sneaking glances at Tsukishima to gauge his reactions to each new scene, Yamaguchi decides to shut off the game for the night in favor of helping Tsukishima set up the futon.

This is when he decides to bring the topic up again. “You seemed to be really focused on the game Tsukki! Especially that character. I told you they would be the cutest!! I really didn’t expect them to be your type though.” In a panic, Tsukishima goes back to his original method of avoiding the questioning completely, but he is out of luck as Yamaguchi is the most stubborn person that he knows and will not drop it again until he gets an answer. “Still nothing?” says Yamaguchi, “how about we do 20 questions?”

“...”

“hot or cold?”

“...”

“You tell me why you’ve been quieter than usual tonight?”

“What are you talking about?” Tsukishima demands, whipping his head up to look at Yamaguchi. “Hah, gotcha!” Yamaguchi gloats, “but seriously, what is up with you? You were fine until we started playing. Are you just too proud to admit that these games are actually entertaining or —” “I don’t like these stupid games, I like you!” Tsukishima interrupts in a sudden outburst.

Yamaguchi stands there with his jaw dropped open as they both struggle to process the words that just came out of Tsukishima’s mouth. “Really?” Yamaguchi finally says, his shaky voice barely above a whisper. “Yeah, so… yeah” Tsukishima replies eloquently as he turns away from Yamaguchi to begin quickly packing up his things in order to make a quick escape. He freezes when Yamaguchi lightly grabs his wrist to prevent any further movement. He is sure that his ears are bright red, betraying his emotions even though his face is hidden from Yamaguchi’s sight. Then, Yamaguchi starts laughing. “Great,” Tsukishima thinks “I just told him how I feel and he’s laughing in my face”. Tsukishima steals a glance at Yamaguchi only to see him laughing while fondly looking at Tsukishima like he was the most precious thing in the whole world. And maybe he was in Yamaguchi’s eyes. “Sorry,” says Yamaguchi while wiping a tear from his eye, voice still slightly shaking with uncontained laughter, “it’s just that you make fun of otome games for being cliche when you are the walking definition of a kuudere! I absolutely can’t deal with you!” Yamaguchi only laughs harder at the glare that Tsukishima sends his way until Tsukishima quietly says, “the difference is that you actually like those games…”

Yamaguchi pauses while he considers Tsukishima’s words. Was he really so oblivious to Yamaguchi’s many, many attempts at flirting? He was hardly subtle. Subtlety is definitely not one of Yamaguchi’s strengths, he is more of an ‘all or nothing’ kind of guy. What stumbles out of Yamaguchi’s mouth next could be considered somewhat of a hot mess as far as confessions go. “Are you kidding me? Like, you’re being serious right now? You’re not joking?”

“Yes.” Tsukishima replies coldly, ready to just make a run for it so he can go crawl in a hole and die alone in peace.

“Sorry Tsukki!” Yamaguchi replies hurriedly, “I just… it’s just… have you really not noticed?”

“...noticed what?” Tsukishima says, suddenly reconsidering his whole crawling-in-a-hole plan.

“I have liked you for so long, and I definitely haven’t hid it. I mean, I even regularly share my fries with you!” Yamaguchi half-screams, exasperated at how stupid his seemingly ‘smart’ friend is being. “That doesn’t mean anything if they’re just the ones that don’t meet your ridiculous criteria for a ‘good’ french fry and — wait what?” Tsukishima responds, cutting himself off as he truly realizes what Yamaguchi said. “I said that I like you too, idiot” Yamaguchi says fondly. There he goes again, looking at Tsukishima the same way that he looks at the shiny rocks that he picks up on the way home after practice sometimes. Perhaps Tsukishima has more in common with those shiny rocks than he cares to admit. “I am not an idiot” Tsukishima says instead, faking offense in a way that he knows will make Yamaguchi laugh. “Ehhh” Yamaguchi responds while giggling again.

In yet another lapse of judgement, Tsukishima leans forward to grab Yamaguchi’s face and pull him into an obviously inexperienced kiss. Realizing his mistake, Tsukishima quickly pulled away and apologized “ Sorry, I should’ve uh… asked first or something… you just looked so cute and I…” He was cut off by yet another chaste kiss from Yamaguchi. “It’s okay, you’re really nervous so I’ll let it slide,” Yamaguchi says with a small smile, his face still inches from Tsukishima’s own, “we should probably get some sleep now.” “Yeah, we probably should” Tsukishima agrees while pulling Yamaguchi in for another kiss.

#tsukishima x yamaguchi #yamaguchi tadashi #tsukishima kei #tsukkiyama #hq fluff #first kiss #confessions #sleepover