Archive of Our Own

Tendou Satori’s chocolate shop feels like it’s asleep.

That’s how you would describe it. The small store sits in the 6th arrondissement, only a short walk from Notre Dame and across the river from the tourist attractions that put Paris on the map. It’s two rooms connected by an open counter that shows wheels of chocolate spinning against a soft, brown wood. The space is small considering how expensive the rent is by this part of the city, St-Germain-des-Pres, even from the outside. 

It’s sleepy here, complemented by the sleepy look of its owner. Orangish wood counters reflect the warm yellow light from the light bulbs above the store and when you walk in, a small chime above the door jingles. From the outside, you can see a single glass window, stocked with pristine chocolates that Tendou replaces daily and its aura is warm and inviting, if not a bit eerie.

Upon meeting Tendou, you think it suits him. 

He perks up when you walk in, a white chef’s outfit adorning his tall lanky body and a purple apron tied evenly around his slender waist. He drums his fingers against the wood when you enter, speaking a practiced bonjour that is tinged with an accent you can’t quite place. On his apron, there is a spot of chocolate, as if only moments ago he had been standing by those large wheels, scraping candy from them and into the tub they run through as they spin in constant circles. 

“ Bonjour, j’ai enten- ” you attempt French, but it comes out warbled, an embarrassing spill of syllables that feel heavy in your mouth. “I, uhm, I saw that you were hiring. That’s what the sign outside says, right?” 

You lean onto the counter as if that will make English any easier for someone who doesn’t speak it to understand. Then, you point behind you to the glass window where a clean sign reads Nous Embauchons . You think that means he’s hiring, but you aren’t sure. 

“Yup.” He grins lazily, eyes following your finger before they flit back to your face. “Do you have a resume?” 

His English is better than his French, though he still sports an accent. You wonder how that happened. 

“Uhm, not with me.” You cringe at how unprofessional you sound. 

“Hm.” He hums from behind the counter before pushing off of it with his elbows. “That’s fine. Have you ever worked with chocolate before?” 

“Not exactly. I waited tables back in the States though.” You shrug, glancing around in an attempt to avoid his gaze which stays fixed on you as he speaks. 

He hums. It’s a delightful sound from the back of his throat, inquisitive and upbeat. “That’s where you’re from?” He walks around the counter until he’s in front of you, leaning back against it in an easygoing manner, like the weight of his long limbs is tiring to support on his own. 

You let your gaze trail from him to the soft, wood floors, worn by shoes but shining still as if they’d just been mopped. You nod, shrugging your shoulders. “Yeah. I don’t speak much French.” 

“I can tell.” His lips curl up in a wry grin, his eyes narrowing in a way that unsettles you. “Why do you want to work here?” 

“I’m sorry-” you clear your throat, “is this the interview?” 

He shrugs again, arms crossed over his chest. You can see the heave of his ribcage as he lifts his shoulders, lanky limbs intertwined with themselves. “Sure. Why not?” 

“You haven’t even told me your name.” 

“Tendou Satori. Or, Satori Tendou. Whichever you prefer.” Tendou looks at you as if he’s looking over the rim of thick glasses, lips curled up before he answers the question you were about to ask with an easygoing sentence. “ Nihonjindesu. It’s Japanese.” 

It sounds more natural coming from his mouth and you’re able to place his accent now that he’s told you. Tendou eyes you for a moment as you give him your name like he’s studying you, and it makes the hair on your neck stand up. Despite the sleepiness of the shop, Tendou is remarkably perceptive. You get the feeling that he’s never known a normal like yours. 

— 

The first time you come in for your shift, Tendou’s shop is awake. Compared to the sleepy feeling of the last time you were here, it’s thrumming uncharacteristically, though you’re not sure what his usual is. 

There is music —spanish, you think— playing from speakers embedded into the walls and you wonder briefly how they put them in. Did they pull out a part of the old wall, ripping at the beams within it in order to place them, or were they here when Tendou bought the place? Part of you thinks it’s a shame to change something about such an old building. There is a distinct sadness in modernizing. 

He’s in the room adjacent this morning, standing in front of the wheels and filling plastic containers with liquid chocolate that will solidify in a few minutes. Tendou turns when you walk in, calling out yet another bonjour with an added ça va? , to which you respond with a quiet and poorly pronounced oui, ça va . His hat sits on red buzzed hair, cut short by clippers that you imagine hum loudly when he drags it along the curve of his scalp. He smiles as you trip over your words, putting down the tub of chocolate and wiping his long fingers on the towel in his apron pocket.

“First day jitters?” He asks throwing you a cheeky look, his top lip curled up like a cheshire cat. 

That’s an excellent way to describe him, the Cheshire Cat. You can imagine cat ears sprouting from his head, the pink and purple patterns swirling in the back of your mind as you shrug your shoulders plainly. 

“Not really, just not sure where to clock in.” At this, Tendou lifts his head like he’s remembered something and points to the wall just out of view. When you round the corner to look, you can see an old fashioned time stamp machine screwed into it, hanging by a door. Beside it, there is a holder with one additional card in it for a coworker you have yet to meet. You wonder briefly what they are like, if they are a boy or a girl or neither. If they are French or from somewhere else, if they are as odd as Tendou is with matching Cheshire Cat ears. 

By the time you’ve written your name on the card and punched it in, Tendou has returned from the opposite corner of the room with an apron in hand. It’s folded in his grip, the fabric pinching where his lithe fingers hold it like cracks in glass. 

“Wear this while you work. It gets a little messy in here.” You nod, thanking him briefly. 

After you’ve secured the apron around your neck, Tendou ushers you into the main store. At first, with the way he’s flitting his wrist back and forth, you think he’s telling you to back up.  But then it registers to you that he’s telling you to come to him. The action is simple enough, normally what an American would use to tell someone to get lost or move back. If he flipped the action upside down so that his fingers pointed towards the sky, it would be the motion for come here. A culture slip, the kind you’ve been experiencing a lot lately. You chide yourself as you hurry to his side.

“You know what this is?” He asks, raising an eyebrow and leaning his weight on the adjacent counter. With a large hand, he motions to the cash register. 

“A register.” 

“ En Français? ” He smirks and you can see the bottom of his front teeth through the way he tilts his head, teasing you. 

You ponder for a moment, heat rising to your cheeks like warm water below a pot lid. “ Une caisse. ” You sound bad saying it. 

“Bingo!” You flinch at how excited he gets. Yes, today Tendou’s chocolate shop is very much awake. “A cash register and you ” he pauses, pointing at you with a long finger, “get to work it.” 

Tendou is like an espresso shot, or a regular shot. Energy hums through him, the kind that hits quickly and without warning, leaving you loose and jittery. Through the day he bounces between the front room and the factory room, pouring chocolates into pink plastic molds and then filling them with custards and ganaches until they are images of culinary perfection. You can hear them click from their cases onto baking trays lined with paper and then listen as they are shuffled away onto baking racks to be dealt with by someone else. He hums with lively energy, occasionally looking up from those large wheels of chocolate at you as if he had forgotten that you were there altogether. 

He has to help you a few times with the register, encroaching in your space as he apologizes to a customer, leaning his frame over yours in a way that is intrusive but not unwelcome. Tendou smells like chocolate, you wonder if the smell lingers on him permanently– if it clings to his clothes even after they’ve been run in the wash and hung to dry.

The music continues on the speakers through the day and you can hear Tendou humming from the back room, swaying thin hips back and forth to the beat. He’s a little off, like the music takes an extra second to reach him, but its warm and bounces richly off of the honey-wood walls and floors till the shop thrums with an electric energy characteristic of him. 

—

You meet your coworker on your next shift. Her name is Atsuko and she, like Tendou, is from Japan. When she enters the shop, Tendou begins with the usual French but quickly switches to Japanese, smiling widely as she responds with equal energy. It would seem that she has Cheshire Cat ears too. You wonder just when you will sprout them. 

Atsuko wears large black boots that bang across the floor. They’re platformed, adorned with buckles and silver chains that jingle with each step and when they catch the light, it’s like she’s cast in a spotlight. Her brown hair’s cut just above her shoulders in a straight line so blunt that if it were a knife it wouldn’t be able to cut butter. She wears a skirt, short and black to match her shoes, and her top is a dusty brown just lighter than her hair— it compliments it. 

Atsuko is from Osaka and you only know this because Tendou pointed it out. According to him, Atsuko speaks differently, though you are not familiar enough with Japanese to be able to tell. He laughs and says that she speaks like the equivalent of someone from the American south, to which she responds that at least she doesn’t use Sendai-ben . You think you understand a little better now. 

“He’s weird, huh?” She says to you. Her English is not as good as Tendou’s. Atsuko’s accent sits heavier on her tongue, mixing syllables with tinges of japanese pronunciation, but her grammar is correct. You appreciate her effort wholeheartedly.

She leans against the counter beside the register, her short and thick brown hair falling in tufts around her face, framing her cheekbones like a picture frame. 

“A bit.” You shrug, glancing to where Tendou whisks chocolate in the kitchen. 

“Yeah, but he’s a good guy— Ī yatsu .” Astuko smiles. It’s toothy and you can just barely see where her gums meet her teeth. She waits as if she wants you to try saying it and when you do, she smiles again, wider this time.

Atsuko spends half of her shift by the register with you. She is responsible for boxing chocolates. She’s meant to be in the back with Tendou and when she is, she speaks Japanese with him. It’s almost melodic to listen to her timbre of foreign words while watching her place small sweets in paper foils. Then she boxes them away so that you can pull them out a moment later when someone wants a sample or places an order. The boxes crowd the shelves behind you and every now and then, after she slides one into place, she’ll lean against the shelves and give a small glance between Tendou and you as if she knows a secret. 

Atsuko fills you in on it during your lunch break, which you took together despite Tendou’s insincere protests. She tells you, in earnest and between wry smiles, about Tendou and his chocolate shop. 

Tendou likes hiring foreigners. Or rather, Tendou likes collecting freaks. After all, what type of person moves to France only to work in a chocolate shop but a freak and a weirdo, himself included. He likes watching them work, hearing French words roll off of their tongues in thick accents the way they do his. It’s something of a hobby, collecting people from other places like souvenirs. He knows that the French will regard them as if they are not made entirely of the same clay, but cardboard. They will turn up their nose as soon as their mouths open to place the first icky French syllable. 

Tendou offers a refuge. In his shop, the muddled French syllables sound proper and an amalgamation of languages reigns supreme even when natives come in to peer at the chocolates in the clean glass cases. 

He’s had somewhat of a revolving door of people who work at his shop. Some come and work for a long while, months or years of consistently coming in until they find a calling and eventually migrate, and others only stay for a short while. They walk in through the doors and work four-hour days until they, like the rest, move on elsewhere. 

You will probably be the latter. 

Tendou is the only constant in this place. Even his menu shifts, his assortments of truffles changing on an almost monthly basis. He doesn’t really mind it though. It means that he gets to collect more people, add to the bank of language and knowledge he keeps stored on the shelves of his mind, collecting people and cultures like figurines that attract dust in an attic. 

You admire the curve of her cheek as she talks, the way they take on a slightly pink tint through the tan tone of her skin. You think it looks soft and you momentarily wonder if chocolate has properties that are good for skin because she and Tendou have been sneaking bites of it all day. They smile at each other through candy-coated teeth, giggling in the backroom as if they were girls who had just shared a secret, before swallowing their bites whole and returning to the individual tasks they were completing. 

“Do you plan on staying?” You ask her, leaning forward and resting your elbows on your knees. Out of the corner of your eye, you check the clock. In 10 minutes it will be time to return to work. Tendou will reopen the shop (because he closes it for lunch) and you will stumble your way through muddled french hoping that the huffy Parisian understands. 

“No.” She answers quickly, leaning her cheek on her hands. “I’ll be moving back to Osaka at some point. Parents need some help at home.” 

You furrow your eyebrows, prying a little further into her life. She tells you candidly that she has three other siblings, all under the age of 14, and that they are having a hard time managing everything at once. Atsuko tells you that before she moved to France, she acted as a babysitter and watched over them. 

“It sucks but I love them. So I’m gonna go back.” Atsuko smiles at you again, though it’s not as toothy this time.

You nod, exhaling deeply and she does the same, mimicking your movements in a way that feels silly. Her Cheshire ears show again and you laugh, rolling your eyes. 

—

Sometimes, it rains in Paris for two weeks straight. Your shoes always get wet, soaking through to your socks in a way that makes them frustratingly damp. You know that when you take them off at the end of the day, your toes will feel sore from the moisture. 

Rain collects on the sidewalk in small puddles, in dips where the sidewalk is older, worn from the steps of people who have occupied the city far longer than you. 

During these weeks, when the rain is relentless, Tendou makes hot chocolate, drizzling some of his own chocolate mixtures into a cup and swirling it with milk and some heavy cream– the way the French make it. He hands it to you and Atsuko, closing the shop for extended periods so that the three of you can drink it in peace. You wonder how he has customers anymore with how odd his hours are, changing constantly to suit his fancy. 

“You like it?” He asks, leaning sideways slightly to peer into the cup you have just sipped before turning his gaze upward at you. Tendou asks every time and the answer is always yes. He makes good chocolate, sweet and slightly bitter. 

“Best hot chocolate I’ve ever had.” Atsuko responds and he tosses her a nasty look because he wasn’t asking her . 

He looks back at you expectantly, waiting for his usual answer like a dog watching its owner prepare a food bowl. 

“It’s great.” And then his lip curls up in a smile the way they usually do and you can’t fight off your own. It aches in your cheeks, making them sore with mirth as you sip and look over at the rim at Atsuko, who swirls hers around in a circle in the cup. 

You feel closer to them now, mainly to Atsuko, who has become something of a confidant since you started working. You think it’s sad that after this, you won’t be able to see her, though maybe you will if she ever decides to come back to Paris and stay. You don’t think she will. She seems the type to not return somewhere unless she has to. Meanwhile, you just sort of end up places. 

Atsuko finishes her hot chocolate and slaps Tendou on the back. He wobbles like a toothpick, struggling to balance his still-full cup of chocolate without spilling. 

“She told you she’s leaving, right?” He says once she’s out of earshot. 

“Yeah. Do you know when?” 

Tendou shakes his head solemnly, as if in mock mourning. “Nope. But when she does, she’ll finally have a place to speak her dialect freely.” 

“I still don’t understand that.” You laugh, taking another sip and letting the chocolate melt through you. 

“Yeah well, you’re from America so… I wouldn’t expect you to.” Then, he leans his head down so his face is below yours before he smiles. “It’s funny though, trust me.” 

Tendou creeps you out. Not in the classic way in which you think you might need to call HR (if this small chocolate shop even has one), but rather, in a way that makes you think that maybe you should wear nice lingerie under your work uniform because it feels like Tendou can see through clothes and walls. He’s got eyes like that. Big and double-lidded with a heavy crease where his eye curves into his skull. They’d almost be bulbous if it weren’t for the lazy way they seem to remain half-closed, trailing slowly from object to object as if he were taking in each minute detail and committing it to memory, then forgetting it the moment his gaze shifts. 

Your attraction to him begins as something of a novelty, like an odd trinket you find at a garage sale, complete with chips and cracks that make it fun to hold between your fingers. You imagine rolling the physical object of your attraction in your hand, caressing your fingers through the dips and grooves of old painted glass. You wonder if your attraction to Tendou is smooth like it, or if it runs like sandpaper across your knuckles. 

It’s nothing you can place and you’re not sure what brings the butterflies in your stomach to life, but you feel them when he looks at you. Tendou drags his tongue across the front of his teeth. The smooth muscle glides against them slowly like he’s trying to memorize the feeling of them, watching with those eyes that see through clothes for any indication that you’re nervous. If he sees it, he’ll pounce on you, and picturing it in your mind, you imagine a cat pawing unceremoniously at a feather on a string. 

“I believe you.” You snort, sipping your chocolate again to avoid his eyes. 

“You should. I’m a funny guy.” Tendou’s voice takes on a pleasant lilt, curling up at the ends of the words like wallpaper from an old room. 

You laugh again, this time a little harder, and wipe the corner of your mouth with your sleeve. Tendou watches as you do and you think to yourself that if your situation were different, he might have licked it off of you. 

—

You arrive earlier than usual for your shift. 10 minutes to be exact. You pull open the front door of the shop with a heave, the bell chiming distantly as you peer in through the opening into the backroom. Tendou is there hunched in front of a laptop, frame curled in an awkward way so that his back is arched like a cat— you think that the only thing missing are his cheshire cat ears. His eyes are wide as he peers at it, lips curled in a smirk. He doesn’t notice that you’ve come in and you manage to make it all the way to clock in before he does, turning quickly to face you. 

“Look who it is. Coucou ,” It’s an informal way to say hello, but it’s him and it carries that overtly animated tone he seems to often take. And when he says your name in the same tone right after, it drips like honey from his mouth. Sickly sweet at the edges where affection meets a casual greeting between friends. 

The greeting is as unusual as he is. It’s something you’d say to a child, similar to peekaboo or baby talk, and Tendou says it with a wry smile. His eyes are glossed over, like he’s just woken up or been awake for far too long. 

“ Salut , what are you watching?” You lean against the counter, into his space a little. Tendou turns the opposite way you’d expect him to, twisting his body further so that his shoulder blade presses into the counter behind him. He smiles, leaning his head back to look at you fully and it gives you the urge to reach up and scratch your fingers against the grain of his haircut. 

“Volleyball.” He drags out the word like it’s a secret. “My friend’s playing.” 

“You like volleyball?” You raise an eyebrow, leaning forward unceremoniously to squint at the screen. It’s an overhead shot of the court and Tendou points to where a man stands on it, broad-shouldered and stone-faced. 

“Mhmmmm. Used to play in high school.” He gives you a shit-eating grin like he’s just proved something to you. “Guess what position.” 

You roll your eyes. “I haven’t got the faintest clue about volleyball.” 

“Too bad.” Tendou’s lips curl up again, his eyes narrowing to slits. A cat and a feather. “You have to guess or I won’t tell you.” 

“Fine…” You avert your eyes, suddenly warm inside like a pot of steady-boiling stew. “Uhm… ball… hitter.” 

Tendou makes the sound of a loud buzzer, his already raised hand coming down to push on the side of the table as if there were a button there to trigger the noise. It grates on your ears, loud and embarrassing. “Wrong. Outside hitter is a position though, so good guess.” 

He laughs, turning his attention back to the screen. You want to slap him upside the head for teasing you like that. Maybe you’ll hear marbles rattle around or maybe chocolate will begin to pour out of his ears. 

“You neve-” 

He cuts you off, eyes slinking across his lower waterline as he leans his head onto his forearms, hands already sticky with sugar. “Middle blocker. Siiiince you wanted to know so bad.” Tendou gives you the Cheshire Cat grin, syllables lazy and drawn out. His voice feels like it drowns you. You feel like Tendou has filled you up and holds you under, caught beneath a shining claw. 

“Right.” Your cheeks heat and you turn your attention back to the screen. Tendou lets his gaze linger on you for a moment more before it meanders to converge with yours, blinking slowly as if he were switching gears. 

“My friend’s serving.” 

You watch the screen. On it, the broad-shouldered man tosses a ball into the air, running forward with heavy thuds until he jumps and slams the ball to the other side of the court. It hits the linoleum with a slap and you flinch at the thought of watching it whizz by you, a blur of white and blue. You notice that the man is left-handed. He looks down at it, curling his fingers into the center of his palm as if he were sizing up the lingering sting before offering a nod to a teammate. 

Tendou’s lips have curled up again, watching the way you stare wide-eyed at his companion. 

“That looks like it hurt.” You wince, imagining the sting in the tips of your fingers, the way it would move from your palm outward like fire consuming grass. 

“He’s used to it.” Tendou says it matter of factly, smiling slightly. 

You tear your gaze from him, returning it to the laptop which now displays the score. It reads 2-1 in blocky yellow letters. The lights from the electric scorekeeper flicker slightly as if it were a player trembling under the weight of the broad-shouldered man’s serve. 

They play for the Schwieden Adlers. It’s written in a cursive scrawl under the scoreboard that reminds you of baseball matches back in the states, the “s” curling under the rest of the word. “I didn’t realize the Adlers were a Japanese team.” 

“Huh, really?” Tendou snorts, standing to his full height. “I guess I kind of get it. But no, they’re Japanese. Wakatoshi and I went to school together.” He shakes his head, adjusting his apron and grabbing his chef’s hat. Tendou plops it onto the top of his head, covering his red buzzed hair with the stark white. “Honestly, you can be such an airhead, huh?” 

He reaches out, placing his palm flat on the top of your head and shaking you slightly. His eyebrows are raised and you find yourself dizzied by the way he’d set you up. Tendou corners you until you’ve only one way to go, directly through him. Just when you think you’ve gotten past him, he’s suddenly in front of you and you’ve no choice but to chug full steam ahead. A difficult task when you’re up against a 6’3 middle blocker, whatever that means. 

“You’re an asshole.” You laugh, still standing by the computer screen as he moseys to the front of the shop and pulls open the glass door. The bell chimes again and you turn away to tie an apron around your waist, pulling the fabric between your fingers and beginning to knot it around your waist. 

“Tsk, tsk, swearing at your boss? I knew you weren’t a goody-two-shoes.” 

You don’t have to look at him to know that he’s once again sprouted cat ears. 

—

You ask Atsuko to teach you Japanese a month into working in Tendou’s shop. It’s not because you have trouble communicating, or because anyone’s English is less than satisfactory, but instead because you feel like your weight is not being pulled. Somehow, it makes you feel out of place to be the only one who cannot switch like a light. 

“Japanese? Why not French?” She questions, leaning against the counter beside you. Atsuko tilts her head, raising an eyebrow. 

“Uh-” You glance to where Tendou stands, his back to the both of you and blissfully unaware of the conversation. “I just want to learn. Y’know, speak with you guys in a way you’re comfortable.” 

She follows your gaze, the corners of her lips pulling up. “Ahhhh, I see.” Atsuko lowers her voice. “You want me to keep it a secret from him?” 

She uses her thumb to motion to Tendou and you feel your cheeks heat up. It’s true, you’d wanted to learn without him knowing. Maybe because you know he’d tease you, but mostly because you’d like to see the face he makes when you speak to him in his mother tongue. You wonder crudely if Tendou would blush the way you do. 

“Yes, please.” You give her a small smile, trying to fight off the embarrassment rising in you. You shouldn’t need to feel embarrassed, but you do. Surprising anyone with something like this feels a bit exposing, especially when it comes to Tendou. 

“Look at you, being so polite. And don’t worry, I’ll teach you standard Japanese.” She laughs and at this, Tendou looks behind him. You meet his eyes for a moment before looking back to Atsuko who has leaned forward to lower her voice while looking at Tendou. “We’ll start with ‘teach me’. Oshietekudasai .” 

You repeat it to her and she slaps you on the back. “Your accent sucks.” 

“What are you two giggling about?” Tendou calls from the back, suddenly feeling very left out. You can hear the curiosity in his voice. 

“We were just saying that your hat is stupid and you look like those inflatable things at car sales on TV.” Atsuko tosses you a wink before walking to the back. Tendou offers a grumble and a single Japanese word to which Atsuko shrugs and laughs. They speak for a moment more in Japanese before settling back into a routine. 

The shop grows quiet again save for the soft sound of music playing from the speakers and you can hear them shuffle in the back. You busy yourself with making sure the glass cases are stocked, repeating the new word you’ve learned to yourself like a mantra. Oshietekudasai . 

—

Atsuko teaches you Japanese on your breaks and during lulls in the day for two months. You’re having trouble picking it up, never having been very good at learning a new language and if you thought French was hard, Japanese is another beast entirely. Atsuko tells you that she doesn’t have time to teach you to write or read Japanese lettering, smiling fondly when she says that even people raised speaking Japanese have trouble with kanji. 

Still, you pick up new words and can place them in Atsuko and Tendou’s sentences now. You can tell, through context, what they’re saying. It’s only a faint idea, but now you can pick up on the subject of the sentence and it's enough to make you smile to yourself. 

But Tendou and Atsuko’s conversations remain largely secret and when Atsuko begins coming into work less, you take it upon yourself to learn. You think she may leave soon, that her gradually more erratic schedule means she will soon go back to Japan. None of you broach the subject though. Instead, both Atsuko and Tendou behave as if this is a norm. 

They mosey around the back, talking about next week or about what they plan to do after work, but they never linger for long on the subject of staying. Instead, their conversations are held in hypotheticals. You find yourself joining them, joining in on their casual dance around the subject. Together, the three of you tiptoe.

You’re not used to the bitter ache of goodbye, but it seems they are, Tendou most of all. On Atsuko’s last day, he behaves normally, sneaking bites of chocolate with her still. 

“You nervous?” Atsuko asks on your last break together. You’re both sitting against the wall out back. It’s a small alleyway and the concrete is slightly wet from the rain but neither of you seems to mind. 

“For what?” You laugh, raising an eyebrow as you lean against the back wall. 

“To be alone with him.” 

It seems that she’s picked up on the way you feel about him, as if it weren’t obvious in the way you study their language. You look at her for a second, once again admiring the curve of her cheek before shaking your head. “Not really, though I’m not sure I’m good enough at Japanese to speak to him with it.” 

Atsuko laughs at this, throwing her head back. “You’re not. But you’ll get there.” She sighs and pulls her feet closer. Her boots jingle when she does. “I’ll keep teaching you though. We can talk on the phone and stuff.” 

“Oh good, what ever would I do without you telling me how bad my accent is?” You smile and she gives you her signature toothy grin. 

“Someone has to do it!” Atsuko pauses, inhaling. “ I was nervous to be alone with him. Don’t know why, but I was. It was like I was having my first day at work all over again.” 

You think for a moment about Tendou, mind wandering to where he’s probably sitting in the back of the shop watching a volleyball game he missed. He’s the type to make people nervous. It always seems like he just knows things, like he can read the people around him like a book. You think that maybe Atsuko is a book that doesn’t want to be read while you, on the other hand, feel like blank pages. Well, save for the one with his name on it, scrawled in cursive lettering that bleeds affection for the tall red-haired man. 

“I’ve got one more word to teach you. It’s how you tell someone you like them.” She smiles at you knowingly, her lips curled at the edges. She’s teasing. 

“Why would I need to know that?” You laugh, trying to brush it off. It feels a bit pointless, Atsuko has most likely assumed your feelings for some time now. 

She shrugs lightly. “Maybe you won’t, but it’s good to know. Fun to say too.” 

You wait expectantly for the word and when she says it, you think you know what she means. Suki . Atsuko breaks down the syllables into two, su- and ki- . They roll off her tongue gently in two succinct sounds and you mimic it the same way. It feels like, in breaking down the word, she has broken down its meaning and stamped it into your brain. Like she’s put a label on the garage sale trinket you’ve been holding in your hand since that vague attraction to Tendou took root in the tips of your fingers. 

When you go back inside, Tendou looks up from where he sits hunched in front of a laptop. He’s right where you expected to find him. “Ready?” He asks, already walking to the front of the store and unlocking the door. You both hum your responses. 

Before Atsuko leaves, she helps you set up a LINE ID . You’ve never used the app, nor do you plan to use it for anyone but her. She tells you that this way, you won’t need to wrack up international charges to talk and you smile at her. Atsuko’s ID pops up in LINE as your only contact. Her profile picture is cute, taken in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. 

When she leaves, she leaves like it’s any other day, walking out of the front door with her big heavy boots in a similar fashion to the way she walked in on the first day you met her. The bell above the door jingles and you think for a moment that maybe to Tendou, that sound isn’t as cheerful as it feels to you. 

—

Working alone with Tendou is different than when Atusko was there. At first, the shop feels too large and then it quickly becomes too small. You are painstakingly aware that Tendou is no more than ten steps from you and it’s as if he is constantly encroaching on your space. His presence is large and looming, one that makes you consistently aware of yourself and of him. 

Occasionally, he will peer up at you from the wheels of chocolate, offering you a coy smile that rattles through your very being. He does this especially after you help a customer, French still clumsy but smoothing out. Like stones pushed by the tide against the soft sand. You think it’s because you’re getting better, getting used to being here. You can feel the confidence with which you speak to them, the way clarification becomes more natural to you when you do slip up. 

Tendou starts bringing in sweets to work, usually things he’s picked up on his way to the shop. He rides up to the front of the store on a bike with a box balanced precariously in one hand. Inside, you find pastries and cakes, things for you both to enjoy far too early in the day. 

Today, he’s brought you a fist-sized pastry topped with cream. It’s soft and almost too ceremonious for what it is—which is essentially a cream puff. Still, you smile, taking the box. 

“Y’know, if you’re not careful, you’ll spoil me rotten.” You laugh, looking at the dessert. “Looks good though, thanks.” 

“You’re already spoiled rotten.” He laughs. “Besides, I’ve got a sweet tooth.” 

Tendou peers at you, smiling lightly. You’re not sure where “sweet tooth” and “spoiled rotten” connect, but with the way he’s looking at you with those eyes that can see through clothes and walls, you’re almost sure he doesn’t mean it about the dessert. 

“I’m just gonna eat this and pretend you didn’t insult me.” You roll your eyes, picking up the treat and biting into it. It’s sweet, as expected, but somewhat light. You’d expected the cream to be too heavy, but instead, it is delicate. The flavor spreads across your tongue and you smile delightfully when you look at him.

“You like it?” Tendou asks, the familiar question dripping from his lips. 

He says it like he’s looking for something, like he wants to hear you respond in a certain way. You don’t know what it is, but there’s that word again. Like… suki . You’ve turned it over so much in your mind that now the English word reminds you of the weighted Japanese phrase. You wonder, briefly, how it sounds when he says it. 

“It’s really good.” You smile, brushing off the thought. 

“I have good taste.” He says coy— almost playfully— and you have to furrow your brows for a moment. Tendou gives you a sideways look accompanied by that slick smile you’ve become so accustomed to, almost like you’ve been playing a game of cards and he has just pulled an ace.

“I hope so. You make chocolate.” You laugh. 

“Mm, I have good taste in more than just chocolate.”

Tendou watches you for a minute, like he’s scanning for something deeper than just the way you bring the cream puff to your mouth again before he stands to his full height and claps his hands together quickly. “Well! Time to get started!” 

He startles you and you’ve little time to protest that you haven’t finished your treat before you’re setting it down in the back and following him to the baking trays. 

Since Atsuko left, you’ve taken over her job. Now, you spend most of your time in the back with Tendou and only leave to help customers at the front. It feels a bit like a cat chasing a mouse, walking between this room and the next with a cheery call of bonjour but for now it works. 

You wonder when and if he will hire someone else. If he does, will they look at you like you’ve got a striped body and cat ears? Will they wonder how you and Tendou got to be so similar, even if you can’t see it yourself? 

You have to think: when had you stopped being Alice and adopted the Cheshire Cat’s wry grin? 

—

“Gueeeessss what?” Tendou pushes the door to the shop open with a swift movement. He’s just come back from his lunch break, smiling widely. 

“What?” You ask, unable to push the smile from your face at his tone. 

“Wakatoshi is gonna visit.” He crosses his arms over his chest like you understand what that means. 

“Uhm… who?” You raise an eyebrow. 

“Ushijima Wakatoshi? The guy? You know… The volleyball player?” Tendou looks at you expectantly as it clicks into place and you smile widely for him. 

“Oh! Him! Nice, why’s he coming?” You question, leaning against the counter. 

“The Adlers are playing some French team this week. He’ll be here this weekend.” 

“You gonna go to their game?” You busy yourself wrapping the chocolates in front of you. Today’s foil is a periwinkle blue and you wrap each piece delicately.

“Only if you come with me.” Tendou grins at you, shifting his weight in a strange wiggle. 

You think for a moment about the clip you saw of Ushijima playing, the way the ball sounded hitting his hand and then the floor with two large booms. A shiver runs up your spine at the thought of being around someone who grew into adulthood with Tendou, someone larger and stronger than him, with the same slightly twisted sense of humor— possibly the same cheshire ears too. 

You look at him, smirking lightly. “Now why would I go anywhere with you ?” 

“Because you think I’m great and a decent guy.” He nods his head sagely before opening one eye. “And if you say no, I’ll use the excuse that I’m your boss and you have to.” 

At this, you laugh. It’s not as if he has to convince you. You’d already agreed to go in your mind the moment he proposed it, though you do wonder why he wants to take you. 

“Relax, I’ll go, but I’m not gonna understand any of it.” You warn. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll teach you.” He grins and you consider letting your secret slip for a moment and asking him to do it in Japanese.

However, when you arrive at the stadium, you find yourself more intimidated than you thought you’d be. The place is crowded, people bustling into the large doors and through ticket turnstiles. You find yourself growing anxious as you wait outside for Tendou, dressed in clothes that begin to feel out of place. 

Today, you dressed nicely—nicer than you’d like to admit—and for a reason that you wish eluded you. You feel out of place standing alone, staring at the response from Tendou on your phone that reads ‘ i’m here, where r u? ’ in a way that makes you able to hear the way he’d draw out the syllables. You scan over the crowds, looking for any glimpse of the tall man with buzzed red hair. 

“ Coucou .” He’s behind you. 

“Je-sus! You scared me. Don’t do that.” You slap his chest and he snickers. 

“What? You’re not gonna greet me just because we’re not at work? Hidoi .” 

“Hi,” you roll your eyes and gather yourself, “and I’m not mean.” 

An odd look creeps onto Tendou’s face,, he furrows his eyebrows before a small smile unfurls across his lips. “But you so are. Keeping secrets is not a very nice thing to do.”

“What on earth are you on about?” You give him a confused look. 

“Nothing, nothing. Just my spidey senses tingling.” Tendou closes his eyes, nodding his head slowly. 

“You’re insane.” 

Tendou gives you a small smile, a knowing one. “So I’ve been told. Come on, let’s go inside. The first set is gonna start soon.” 

You don’t know what that means, but you follow anyway, sticking close. As he walks, you take note of what he’s wearing, a purple hoodie with black straight-leg jeans. On his feet, he wears worn black converse that you’ve seen him wear in the shop. You notice that there is a scuff of chocolate on the front of his left shoe. 

“You want to buy an Adler’s t-shirt?” Tendou points to the stall and you give him an odd look. 

“Uhm, I think I’m okay…” You laugh slightly. 

“What? You don’t want to wear my best friend’s merch?” Tendou narrows his eyes, grinning at you as he walks. 

You give him a pointed look. “Weirdo.” You say it with more affection than you intend and Tendou clicks his tongue. 

You need to walk a little faster to keep up with him, watching his slightly hunched figure. Every now and then, he looks behind him to make sure you’re still following and when he meets your eyes he gives you a pleasant little smile.

Tendou guides you past crowds and to the first level of seats. You both take a seat in the front row, Tendou pointing to the two that belong to you. It’s a bit intimidating to be so close to the court, but you’re excited at the prospect of seeing Ushijima’s serve up close. You watch as the teams take time to warm up and beside you, Tendou perks up. 

“ WAKATOSHI! ” He calls loudly. You can feel the stares from those around you but you don’t mind, not when it’s Tendou. “ GENKI ?”

At this, the broad-shouldered man turns slowly and scans the crowd. Tendou waves his arms in response and when they spot each other and makes a heart shape with his hands. Ushijima nods his acknowledgment. What you’re surprised to find is that two additional people on the court turn their heads, one tall with dark hair and another rather short with stark white hair. They look shocked, eyes wide until their gaze settles on Tendou as well. 

The dark-haired one walks to Ushijima and taps him lightly, pointing to Tendou. They have a small conversation before the dark-haired stranger walks over to the white-haired one and points to you both. At this, the two of them wave and Tendou gives a surprised giggle. It’s cute. 

“You know more than just Ushijima?” You question, looking at the other two players as they turn their focus back to their team. 

“Mhm, but I never played with them, played against ‘em though.” He watches them run through warm-up exercises. “The constipated looking one is Kageyama Tobio and the creepy white-haired one is Hoshiumi Kōrai.” 

You follow his gaze, brushing off his insults to them with a sideways glance. 

The game starts promptly with the French starting roster being introduced since they have home court before the first set begins. Tendou explains the rules to you as the introductions drone on, telling you that volleyball games are five sets. He explains that you cannot hold the ball, that there are certain cases in which sets exceed 25 and 15 points, and that each play can only include three hits. 

It’s complicated and you don’t quite get it, but as the first set begins and ends with the Adlers’ taking it, you start to understand a little better. 

Ushijima’s serve is even more frightening up close, it thunders and you swear that the force of it rattles the stands. Though, watching a full game, you realize that he’s not the only one good at serves. On this court, they are par for the course and you’re mesmerized by the way players handle them. 

At one point, during the forth set— match set for the Adlers—Ushijima ‘ stuffs ’ (Tendou’s term for it) the opposing team's hitter and beside you Tendou breathes out. “They’re monsters…” 

“Monsters?” You ask, still watching the court. 

Tendou leans sideways, close to your ear with his head facing the court. You can feel the heat from his body. “It means they’re really good.” 

You wonder if anyone described him that way back when he played. 

The French team takes the fourth set and the fifth set drones on. You can feel how tense the room is, the way both the fans and players are on the edge of their seats. Your eyes follow the ball as it whizzes through the air. Point to the Adlers, point to the opposing team, and so on and so forth. It has you tensed up, shoulders stiff as you root for men you’ve yet to meet. 

When the Adlers win and the cheering is done, you expect the tension to die down, but it doesn’t. Instead, you feel it shift in manner, manifesting as both pride and disappointment. The French team crowds around their coach defeated and panting, while the Adlers crowd theirs triumphant. Tendou’s eyes slink to the French team. 

“That’s a tough loss.” He says quietly. 

You turn, waiting for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. Instead, he just looks at them for a moment more—as if he can remember the feeling of that frustration—before turning back to you. 

“Mind if we wait around a bit for them?” He raises an eyebrow. 

“Not at all! I expected to.” 

“Good. I want you to meet Wakatoshi.” He stands from his seat. “We can wait by where they exit, come on.” 

I want you to meet Wakatoshi . You’re not sure why it sticks with you, but it does. You wonder why he was so adamant about you coming, why he wants you to meet his best friend so desperately. Your thoughts run away with you briefly, pocket becoming heavy with the trinket you’ve been carrying with you. In your mind, you reach down and pull out the metaphorical object, turning it over once again. 

You follow him, trailing behind as he walks around to the inside of the stadium where a door leads to locker rooms. There are fans there, most likely people who have been following their progress through their careers. Although, there are fewer people than expected considering it’s an away game. You imagine what it must be like for the Adlers when they play on their home court. In your mind, hoards of fans gather in front and the athletes are separated by a thin red rope as if they were merchandise that normal people are not allowed to touch. You and Tendou lean against the wall just behind the crowd, waiting patiently for a star athlete that Tendou knows well. 

“I see why you like volleyball so much.” You breathe out. “It had me on the edge of my seat.” 

“Right?” He responds excitedly. “It’s like you can feel the energy whenever the balls in play.” 

“Mhm and you can kinda see the energy move a little. Like the players when they hit it.” You smile, heat flooding your cheeks. “Does that sound weird?” 

“Nope!” He pops his p, eager and giving. Relief settles across your chest, momentarily relieved of potential embarrassment. “You gonna become a volleyball nerd now?” 

You sneer at him, tilting your head side to side. “Maybe.” 

“Bet you regret not buying a jersey.” 

“Actually, I think my wallet is thanking me for that.” You sigh. 

“Whoops. Forgot you were poor for a sec.” Tendou laughs. 

You shove him. He wobbles like a house of cards. “I am not poor.” 

“Stingy, then.” 

You mock him, pulling an ugly face. “Pay me more and maybe I won’t be.” 

You both stand for a second before bursting into a small fit of giggles. Tendou pays you well, both of you know that, but the joke is funny. In fact, just about everything is amusing when he’s involved. Tendou manages to make the mundane spontaneous. His cheeks flush pink, pretty across his skin and your chest swells a bit at the sight. 

“ Tendou-san .” It’s the dark-haired player, Kageyama.

He’s bigger up close, with broad shoulders and a nice face. He’s good-looking, really good-looking. You stand for a moment, looking at him and letting yourself take in his features. They’re gentle and sloping, less sharp than Tendou’s. You think for a moment that maybe you should be flustered.

“ Kageyama-kun !” Tendou tosses his arms up in an overexaggerated response. Then, Tendou begins speaking Japanese. You quickly lose the pace of the conversation because Tendou misses all of the usual greetings and skips right to something that clearly makes Kageyama embarrassed. It makes you smile fondly to yourself because by now, you are all too familiar with Tendou’s manner of speaking. 

They talk for a moment longer before Tendou turns to you and you catch up with the conversation when he introduces you. That’s a phrase you can recognize. 

“ Yoroshiku .” Kageyama responds. You do the same, mirroring his actions and the greeting. Tendou gives you another look from the corner of his eye before turning fully to face you. 

“Kageyama doesn’t speak a lot of English.” Tendou explains, arms moving in a large motion towards him. 

“I speak enough.” Kageyama gives an irritated response and his accent is thick, coating the words. “I’m Kageyama.” 

“I know.” You laugh slightly, clasping your hands in front of you. “Tendou told me about you when the game first started.” 

Kageyama looks at Tendou who offers a shrug. “They had to know. You were whispering about us.” 

“ Omae da !” It’s the little white-haired one this time. He speaks faster than Kageyama, a cocky ball of energy, and you notice that his eyelashes are white too. They sit defined around striking blue eyes and when his gaze shifts to Tendou, you find that they hold a certain intensity. You wonder where he puts all that energy with such a small body. Tendou runs through your introduction again, to which you respond the same way you did to Kageyama. 

“Are you waiting for Ushijima?” Kageyama poses the question in English, glancing between the two of you. 

“Yup.” Tendou pops his p, something he seems to do a lot. 

“He should be out soon,” Kageyama says to both of you. Then, he says goodbye to Tendou in Japanese before turning to you. “It was nice to meet you.” 

“Likewise.” You respond. 

The one named Hoshiumi follows Kageyama, offering you both a wave and what you recognize as a casual term for goodbye. 

“They seem nice.” You say, turning your attention back to Tendou. 

“Yeah, Kageyama’s kind of a shithead though.” Tendou snickers, giving you a cheeky grin. 

“And you’re not?” You respond, rolling your eyes and laughing. 

“At least I admit it.” 

You know when Ushijima leaves the locker room because it is followed by a collective, high pitch squeal. It sounds almost as if someone has left a kettle on to boil, the whistle blowing in a steady and high pitched note. Tendou turns his head, standing fully to peer over the shoulders of others and spot his friend, who takes a little longer to reach you because he is taking stiff pictures with those who ask. 

When he finally does approach, you suddenly understand what all the screaming was about. Ushijima is tall, broad, and handsome . He has a piercing stare and a presence of the utmost confidence. It makes you want to shrink away and clasp your hands in front of your waist as if he were someone of higher status. Then, Tendou reaches out and they grab each other’s hands in a firm shake. He breaks the imaginary barrier you’d built in one swift and comfortable movement. 

They exchange a few words before Ushijima looks to you and you prepare yourself for another Cheshire Cat. You steel your nerves for a wry grin to pick you apart. But instead, what you’re met with is something far more confusing—a stone wall. 

Ushijima looks down at you before turning to Tendou and speaking in a deep and smooth voice ‘ is this them? ’. It’s not in English, but you understand it clearly because Ushijima speaks slowly and clearly. Tendou gives an affirmative response and your brows knit at Tendou who gives you a small smile, his eyes crinkling in the corners. You have the urge to cover yourself because Tendou is giving you the look that sees through clothes, like he knows something you don’t. You think for a moment about what you’re wearing underneath and Ushijima turns his attention to you once again. 

He’s a bit awkward, offering you a handshake and a firm but polite greeting. You can sense his awkwardness, the clumsiness with which Ushijima maneuvers social situations. Though it’s odd because it’s not as if he doesn’t understand but rather than he is so formal it makes for a slight misstep between those he has just met and himself. It’s now that you realize that they are not the same, but parallel. Ushijima may not be a Cheshire Cat, but he belongs in Wonderland. 

Still, Tendou gels easily with him and you smile fondly as they fall into casual conversation. It’s interesting to see Tendou like this because up until now, you’ve only seen him interact with yourself, Atsuko, and customers—all of which he might view as temporary. But now, Tendou and Ushijima are permanent and tangible. Well, as tangible as the two can be. 

“Are you enjoying Paris?” Ushijima asks you after introducing himself, voice baritone and level. 

You nod. “Yeah, though it’s mostly because of Tendou.” 

It’s not a lie. Tendou and his sleepy chocolate shop are probably the reason you like Paris as much as you do. That’s not to say it isn’t a lovely city, but you are out of place here, a black sheep within the confines of the city. The French are not as kind to foreigners as Tendou is, they turn up their noses at you when you speak, hearing the accent and deciding for themselves that you do not belong; that you are an invader. Tendou’s place is different. Just like Atsuko told you, it is a refuge. 

“That’s not surprising.” Ushijima says. 

Tendou exchanges a quick glance with him before speaking again, his voice bright as he exaggerates embarrassment. “You’re too nice to me, Wakatoshi!” 

“It’s true. I’m not surprised that they’re at ease around you.” Ushijima has a way of speaking that implies everything is already out on the table. He speaks like he holds no secrets, like the pages of his book are open to read. 

“I think I give them a hard enough time.” Tendou, on the other hand, speaks like he’s got secrets. Honeyed words fall from his lips like riddles and something about the way he says things makes you think the answers might taste sweet. It’s as if they would melt on your tongue should you choose to indulge them. His eyes slink along his waterline to look at you in one fluid motion and heat floods your face.

You shake off the feeling with a laugh, avoiding both of their gazes for a moment before speaking. “I’m really glad to finally meet you, Ushijima. I watched one of your games a few months back. You’ve got one hell of a spike.” 

“He was one of the best spikers in Japan back when we were in school!” Tendou chimes in, tossing a long arm over Ushijima’s shoulder. 

“Thank you.” Ushijima offers a simple response. It’s self-assured and strong, like he’s heard it many times and is reaffirming the compliment with his response. “Tendou was quite good at blocking too.”

Someone calls Ushijima’s name, a teammate no doubt, from the doors leading to their bus. He nods in acknowledgment before turning to both of you. “My team is waiting. I have to go, it was nice to finally meet you.”

You smile back in response, nodding. Finally? It was nice to finally meet you?

Tendou hugs his friend goodbye before turning to you with a wry grin. His lips curl up at the corners, teeth visible. Your mind runs with the possibility that Tendou has spoken about you before, that he has divulged things about you to Ushijima when he recounts his day. You take a moment to understand fully that you are as much a part of Tendou’s life as he is yours and with the way it sends you spinning, you’re dizzy.

“Ready to go?” He asks, eyes narrowed in a way that you find endearingly familiar. It’s as if he can tell that you’ve just been caught off guard. Tendou starts walking before you have a chance to respond and you jog to catch up with him. 

“Ushijima’s nice. Very uhm… big.” You say once you fall into an even step with him. 

“Haha, yeah,” he looks down at you, hands shoved into his sweatshirt pocket, “you like big guys?” 

You furrow your eyebrows at him, shaking your head and shoving him to the side. He wobbles like a crumbling tower before bumping you with his shoulder. “I’m not gonna divulge that information to my boss.” 

“Poor taste is a fireable offense.” He closes his eyes and nods like he’s considering something. It worries you the way he doesn’t slow his step even when he can’t see. 

“So is being a weirdo.” You retort. 

Tendou clicks his tongue, dipping his head down so that it’s level with yours. “But I like weirdos.” 

“You like a lot of things.” 

Tendou just hums at this, lifting his head up toward the sky and exhaling. It’s cold out, but not cold enough to see your breath, and he seems disappointed at that revelation. He walks with his head angled upward, staring at the glittered night above you. 

“He said you were good at blocking.” You say after a moment, breaking the silence that had fallen between you both. 

“Huh?” He turns to look at you. 

“Ushijima.” You clarify. “He said you were a good blocker in high school.” 

“Oh,” Tendou snickers, dipping his head further into the neck of his hoodie, “yeah. They called me the Guess Monster.” 

“Guess Monster?” You laugh incredulously. “Why?” 

“Because I’m good at guessing.” Tendou looks at you over his cheek, a smug grin on his lips. 

You don’t want to think about what that implies. Your pocket becomes heavy and you reach into it as if you might find that little trinket. As if you’d be able to pull it out and showcase what you’ve created in your mind. It’s weighted and heavy, and though the object that is your attraction is not actually in your pocket, you think that if you dig around enough, you’ll find it.

Or maybe, Tendou has already taken it and put it on one of his shelves. Maybe he has filed it away with the other things he’s collected from the people who come through his doors and you have yet to realize you lost it. 

So you remain silent with him and let him walk you back to your apartment. The streets are still loud, traffic buzzing by you both and disturbing the muddied puddles in the road. They ripple with movement and reflect the streetlights. When they fall completely still, you imagine that if you stepped in one, you’d fall right through— Alice slipping through the rabbit hole. 

Paris is beautiful at night. It’s a city that lives up to the photos of it but it is not a place where you stay. It does not feel like a home unless you are in the confines of Tendou’s chocolate shop, surrounded by music in all languages and the sound of idle chatter coming from the back room.

You wonder what Atsuko is doing right now. If she is waking up and making breakfast for her siblings. Would she expect that Tendou would have brought you to meet Ushijima? Would you come into work tomorrow and be greeted by her familiar feline smile as she asks about how it was? Would Tendou have brought her too? 

“Did Atsuko ever meet Ushijima?” You speak without thinking. 

“Huh? Oh, only on the phone.” Tendou shrugs, keeping his eyes ahead. “He played a few games here but we never got the chance to go.” 

You nod, but there’s curiosity clawing at your throat. The cat you adopted from Tendou and Atsuko is awake and aching to know. It paws at your stomach, turning and twisting with the way a question scratches at the bottom of your throat. 

Your apartment is a short distance from the shop and you begin to lead the way. As the streets become more familiar, so does the feeling in the pit of your stomach. It’s the kind of curiosity you want to push away, anxious and all too eager. It winds your stomach into coils until you can’t contain it, until you are asking before you can stop yourself when you arrive at your apartment entrance. 

“Why did you bring me? To meet Ushijima, I mean.” 

“Because…” Tendou looks down at you, still hunched over himself, weight shifted forward. He looks around him for a moment, like he’s trying to think about it or memorize the area around him. Then he looks at you with those eyes that see through clothes.

“ Omae ga suki .” 

You pause, or rather, you go rigid in your skin. The word hums through it. “What?” 

“What?” Tendou laughs, looking at you lowly. It’s like he’s trying to pretend he hasn’t said anything, or rather, he’s acting like you didn’t hear him. Like you didn’t understand him. He grins down at you, eyes narrowed and teeth peeking below his upper lip. “I said because I thought you’d like it.” 

He’s lying. He’s lying and you know it.

You know it because you’ve spent hours turning over that word in your mind, reading about it’s context, learning about how and when and why it is used. You know the word by heart because Atsuko carved it into your skin. She taught it to you with purpose, with the intent of gluing it to your being just in case . You know because you’ve felt it.

Omae: a casual word for ‘you’ and commonly used by men, ga: a word used to connect two different words or ideas, suki: to like, to love.

Omae ga suki : a confession. 

—

You are late to work for the first time since Tendou hired you. You scurry in through the door, bell chiming as if to announce your tardiness, and Tendou looks up from where he pipes fillings into molds. There is music playing again, but the chime of the bell is louder, ringing in your ears as you smooth the front of your shirt, walking into the back room and past Tendou to clock in. 

“You’re late.” He sing-songs. 

“I know, I’m sorry I…” got too nervous to leave the house. “Got caught up.” 

Tendou eyes you for a moment before shrugging. “Oh well, c’est la vie .” 

You nod, trying the apron around your neck with deft fingers. You’re used to it now, the movement of looping it behind your back in one swift motion. It feels familiar and you distract yourself with the tangle of your fingers in it. 

His wishy-washy attitude has you on edge. Tendou is making sharp turns, sneaking up behind you and sending you out of your skin. He glances every now and then at you from behind the wheels of chocolate, especially when you ring up customers. You can feel him watching the way you handle them, the way you smile and tell them to come back soon in now-practiced French. 

“You’re nervous today.” He says at one point, leaning beside the register. His voice takes on a pleasant lilt, almost teasing. 

“Am I?” You laugh it off, busying your hands with straightening the objects on the counter. 

“Mhmmmm.” He hums, drawing out his syllables. Tendou leans forward onto his hands, hunching his figure over so that his chin rests in his palms and his face is below yours. 

The strange thing about working for someone around your age is the way that, after a while, you settle into a normal that’s free from the strains of business hierarchy. Tendou, for the better part of a month, has felt more like a friend or peer than he has a boss. It seems he deliberately acts like so, waving off questions and handing more responsibility to you until you find yourself answering questions for him, a less formal way of teaching but it works for the both of you. But it’s also because of this casual setting that you think Tendou will not make the first move. He may reiterate the words he spoke the night of Ushijima’s game, but that final step needs to be taken by you. He may say it out loud, but as far as he knows, you know nothing.

It makes you nervous because you do know. That object of your attraction has somehow come to life and now, instead of being a trinket in your pocket, it sits on your shoulder. It whispers in your ear the things you like about him. His lithe fingers, his smile, the way he talks to you like you’re precious. The physical being that should now be called your affection — because this trinket is no longer just attraction and nor is it a novelty— is tethered to your shoulder in a way that makes it ache. You wonder if it will go back to being glass if you look at it. If you touch it, will it go still and silent, only thrumming to life again when you look away next? 

You grab the object, willing it to go rigid in your grasp and pocketing the small beast. You imagine how it’d feel in your fingers, returning to glass as Tendou encroaches in your space. 

“Well, at least your French is getting better.” He hums, leaning against the counter beside you. “You been working on it?” 

You look to him, steeling your nerves and meeting his low-lidded gaze. Tendou is looking through you. It feels like he’s reading the blank pages of your book, flipping through to find his name. “Something like that.” 

“So studious.” Tendou laughs before slapping your shoulder lightly. “Seriously though, let me know if you need to go home or anything. I don’t want you getting too stressed out.” 

You laugh, easing into your routine. “And leave this place to you? You might burn it down.” 

“I’ll have you know I own this place.” Tendou leans forward. “Well… I rent it.” 

“Your poor landlord.” 

— 

You decide to call Atsuko in the morning before your next shift. The call rings three times before she picks up, greeting you with an unfamiliar japanese phrase. 

“‘Suko? It’s me.” You speak into the phone, meandering around your kitchen. 

“Whose me ?” Her smile reads through the phone, the familiar upward tilt of her words giving away the cheeky grin you know she’s wearing. You say your name into the receiver and she laughs. “I’m kidding. No one else calls me ‘suko . It’s not really a real nickname here. What’s up?” 

You consider spilling immediately. You consider telling her about the volleyball game, about Kageyama and Hoshiumi and Ushijima. You consider detailing the way Tendou confessed only to lie through a sly grin about what he said. But instead, you exhale and pad to the couch, sitting down. “Nothing really, just wanted to talk.” 

“Hm, just wanted to talk, eh?” You can imagine the way she’s closing her eyes in mock consideration. “Well, if we’re going to talk, we should do it in Japanese, no?” 

“Fine, but don’t blame me if I misunderstand gravely and assume you’re dying.” You laugh. 

Atsuko tells you about her day in slow spoken Japanese. She works her way through sentences at a pace that you think must be infuriating for her, but she does it nonetheless. The more shocking thing is that you understand for the most part and are able to form warbled responses which she occasionally giggles at. 

She tells you that soon she’ll have to walk to pick up her youngest sibling from school, that things are good in Osaka but were better in Paris. Then she tells you that she misses you and Tendou and that she wishes she could be there when you inevitably reveal to him that you have been learning their language. 

“On that subject…” You say, switching back to English.

“I knew you had something to tell me. You’re so sneaky.” Atsuko laughs into the phone. “Did you accidentally spill the beans? Get a notification about your Japanese streak in Duolingo or something?” 

“No… but that would have been easier to explain.” 

You hear her shift on the other end of the line, like she’s sitting up from a reclined position. “What happened?” 

“I think-” you reword the phrase because you know it, “Tendou told me he likes me.” 

“Did he now?” Atsuko’s grinning, you can hear it. “What makes you say that?” 

You recount the event from two days ago and she grumbles jealously when you mention that he took you to meet Ushijima. You tell her about the confession, saying the phrase out loud for her to hear. Atsuko remains quiet for a moment before she laughs. “That’s a confession, alright.” 

“I know that. I just don’t think he knows that I do.” You give an exasperated sigh. 

“Okay… well do you like him?” She asks. You know she knows the answer. 

“This isn’t about me.” You roll your eyes and you’re sure she can hear it. 

“It definitely is.” 

“Shut up. What do I do?” 

Atsuko exhales and you hear her lean back against the couch. “Nothing. If he said it in Japanese expecting you to not understand, then he isn’t looking for an answer.” 

“Do you think he was just teasing me?” You hate the way anxiety creeps into your voice. 

“ God , no. It’s been obvious how he feels about you. I suspect you’re just dumb.” Atsuko laughs to herself. “Plus, he might be an asshole but he’s not an asshole .” 

You nod as if she can see it. You know Tendou isn’t an asshole, not really. He teases and he’s a bit mysterious, but you’ve never gotten the impression that he does things out of ill will. Atsuko changes the subject, switching back to Japanese. She’s saying something about what she’s cooking for dinner tonight and you hum your responses, still preoccupied with the thought of Tendou. You imagine his slender frame leaning against the counter beside you, the way his fingers look wrapped around the handle of a whisk, how his uniform sits across the expanse of his chest. 

When Atsuko hangs up, she promises to call you tomorrow and you tell her that she better make good on it. The receiver clicks, indicating the end of the call and you sit for a moment longer on your couch. When you pick up your phone, you see that Tendou has sent you a TikTok and you smile fondly to yourself. 

Tendou is certainly a friend, probably more. Being young, he runs his shop more like a place to hang out, trusting you to get done what you need to get done and you always do. Your discomfort at the situation could hardly be called discomfort, but rather, the inbetween when relationships are undefined. You hate this stage, the part where you either lose a friend, gain a lover, or fuck up both and get something inbetween. It’s a fine line to walk and when you think about the situation, your stomach turns. 

You decide that you will lean into it. You decide that you’ll get off the fence and embrace whatever is going on. You’ll play along when he leans into your space, touch him more and encourage him to touch you because you want him to. You want Tendou to touch you. You want him to look at you with those eyes that see through clothes and that Cheshire cat grin. In your pocket, you feel the trinket stir to life and you think to yourself that this time, you will let it. 

— 

You start hanging out with Tendou outside of work. The two of you go to lunch together and meet up on days that the shop is closed. You take your friendship from workplace to recreational in a matter of weeks and all the while, tension boils under the surface. It bubbles beneath the lid of the pot, beginning to steam up the glass and puff out in short spurts. 

Tendou will occasionally say incriminating things in Japanese to you. He’ll mumble them under his breath when you are at lunch or while you work. He will say you look pretty or that he wants to take you out on a date. He says it all through sly smiles, like he’s whispering a dirty secret to you and you play dumb, furrowing your eyebrows and focusing on calming the beat of your heart. 

You package chocolates beside him and sneak sweets the way him and Atsuko did, popping bites into your mouth and smiling at him when he asks you if it’s good. It melts across your tongue the way you think he would. 

“I forgot to tell you but Ushijima is coming into town this weekend.” He says as he pipes filling into chocolate molds. “We’re gonna hang out at my place if you want to come.” 

You look up from the chocolates you’re boxing, giving him a smile. “Sounds fun, though he makes me a little nervous.” 

“Because he’s so big ?” Tendou teases, leaning onto the arm closest to you. 

You roll your eyes, scoffing. “Yeah and he’s like a rock. I don’t think I could handle making a joke to him and getting no response.” 

Tendou laughs. “You get used to it. He’s a good guy.” 

“I don’t doubt it, but still…” You sigh, smiling lightly. 

Tendou reaches forward, his fingers lightly brushing a stray strand of hair behind your ear. It doesn’t stay where he’s put it. “You’ll be alright. He’s not the one that bites.” 

He looks at you with low-lidded eyes, affection swirling in them and in the apples of his cheeks. You can imagine that you have a halo around your head right now, you can see it in the reflection of yourself in his eyes. Tendou looks at you with so much want and fondness that it makes you dizzy. It drips from his lips like sugarcoated candy when he speaks, bleeding into his actions. You can see the way he spills liquid sugar like ichor when he talks. 

Tendou’s skin burns against yours. It lights a fire in your belly that you feel roll through you and the beast on your shoulder whispers thoughts of your desire into your ear. You both stay like that for another moment, just watching for each other’s reactions, responding to the slight catches in your breathing before you lean back on your stool and steady yourself on the counter. 

“Someone needs to put a muzzle on you.” You say, laughing. 

“Take me to dinner first and then you can do whatever you want.” 

“Freak.” You smile at him and he smiles back, his eyes taking that familiar shape of the Cheshire cat’s narrowed eyes and you can see the way water collects at his waterline as if it were a physical response to the affection he holds for you. You feel it too. 

— 

You arrive at Tendou’s place 10 minutes before he told you to and you’re actually a little embarrassed about it. His apartment door is made of old wood that’s been painted blue. Apartments in Paris often look like this, keeping the style of the original architecture to preserve the familiar feeling the city has. When you knock, you find yourself fidgeting and nervous. Ushijima opens the door. 

“It’s you.” He says, his baritone voice rumbling in your ears. 

“Yes, it’s me. Hi Ushijima, it’s good to see you.” You smile, swallowing your nerves. 

“Is that my dear friend, _____?” Tendou calls and you can see the way he peeks his head around the wall. He walks over to the door, placing his hands on his hips. “You’re such an early bird today. Were you that excited to see us?” 

“Maybe Ushijima, I see you almost every day.” You’re lying. 

“I’m hurt.” Tendou feigns sadness. 

“I’ve heard that chocolate has properties that release happy chemicals. Try some maybe?” You laugh, stepping into his house. 

“Yeah, yeah. Take off your shoes before you come in, please.” He drags out the last word in a singsong voice and you nod, doing as he asked. 

You might collect metaphorical trinkets in your mind, but from the look of his apartment, you think Tendou does it for real. His space is full of odd things: decorations, figures, and souvenirs that look slightly out of place where they sit on cheap furniture. They clutter the space, making it feel smaller than it is. It’s by no means ugly, but it is certainly strange, though—like his shop—you think it suits him. 

Tendou has warm brown furniture everywhere and the surfaces of them are all filled with photos and trinkets that you think he must have collected since moving here. In his living room, he has a shelf full of volleyball trophies, as well as pictures from his high school years. You wander around the room, making idle conversation as you gaze at them. 

“You had long hair in high school.” You point out, leaning forward to look at a picture of him and Ushijima in what you assume are high school volleyball uniforms. 

“Yeah, I buzzed it short when I decided to open the shop a few years ago.” Tendou says, running his hand over the top of his head. You think you want to do the same. 

“And you look the exact same.” You laugh as you turn to Ushijima who shrugs his shoulders. 

“Nah, he’s grown a few inches.” Tendou says, sitting back down on the couch. Ushijima follows. 

“Only two.” He counters. 

“That’s a lot of inches for someone older than 18.” You say, taking the loveseat adjacent to them. 

The three of you spend the day together and you learn a lot about both of them and the nature of their friendship. Ushijima is funnier than you expected. He’s got a dry sense of humor, the kind that makes you stop and pause before bursting out into a fit of giggles that makes your stomach hurt. Though notably, Ushijima lacks the Cheshire Cat ears. Still, the both of them manage to make you nervous, especially when they unexpectedly switch to Japanese and you have to pretend not to understand. 

You and Tendou enjoy a beer or two while Ushijima doesn’t partake, stating that he’d prefer water or tea because he’s in season. Tendou obliges and Ushijima makes his way around Tendou’s kitchen. It seems that he knows it well and you imagine fondly the amount of time they’ve spent here together. You find it endearing that they’ve remained friends for so long and you briefly wonder how they managed to stay as close as they are. You’ve barely spoken to your friends from high school. They only occasionally comment on posts you put on your social media and even then, it is distant. 

Still, Tendou and Ushijima are like two peas in a pod. Their energy shifts in tandem, the comfort of their long friendship bleeding into every small action and each word they speak. 

When they switch to Japanese, you busy yourself with sipping your beer, looking at the odd coaster that sits on the coffee table. It has a picture of a cute cartoon animal on it. Then, Tendou turns to you in your spaced out state and asks you something in Japanese. 

“ Do you like beer, _____? ” 

“Huh?” You snap yourself out of it, shrugging your shoulders. “Oh, yeah, especially with meals.” 

You don’t realize what you’ve given away until it’s too late, face flushing with heat as Tendou smirks at you. He’s smiling at you like he’s looking over thick-rimmed glasses again, the corners of his lips pulled up into a wry grin that has your stomach doing backflips. It pulls at the base of your gut as if you are being stretched, and heat pools at the tops of your cheeks and behind your eyes. However, it’s not the reaction you expected from him. Instead, he looks at you like you’ve confirmed his suspicions and leans back on the couch, sipping his drink with a slow nod. He smiles around the spout of the bottle, drinking lighty from it before speaking. 

“Good to know.” 

You navigate through the rest of Ushijima’s visit awkwardly. You tiptoe, avoiding Tendou’s gaze and keeping yourself well reigned in. He occasionally smiles at you, the familiar mischievous smirk that send butterflies from your stomach to your throat until you are afraid that they will fly out when you open your mouth. Ushijima seems to feel the tension because much to your dismay, he leaves first. 

Ushijima rises from the couch, stating that he needs to get going now that it’s past eight. You watch, half of you pleading for him to stay and the other half considering getting up and running out with him. You think that if you run fast enough, you’ll be able to make it to the street corner before Tendou catches you. But Tendou’s presence alone keeps you seated on the couch as you say goodbye, having moved at one point to the last empty seat on it. Tendou walks his friend out and they have a conversation in Japanese that you can’t hear properly before you distinctly hear Ushijima tell him to keep him updated . 

When Tendou returns to the living room, he sits down beside you and smiles. “ How long have you been learning? ” He asks in Japanese and you know why he’s doing it. 

“ A while. Since a month after meeting you and Atsuko. ” You respond in choppy Japanese. The syllables are heavy on your tongue and you can hear your poor accent. Tendou doesn’t laugh, instead he nods, smiling slightly. 

“That’s pretty nice of you.” He says in English, switching fluidly and smiling over the apples of his cheeks. 

“I’m a nice person.” You respond. Does he know that you know? Has he figured out that you could understand him the first time he confessed to you and all of the times after that? You think he must. 

You can feel the tension, the lingering knowledge of the one thing left unclarified. You know its your job to clarify it, you can feel it in the way he leans forward and waits expectantly. He knows, but he wants you to say it, to confirm what he thinks. 

Instead, you are pulled to him like a magnet, steeling your nerves as you slide your hand over his. Tendou’s fingers twitch at the first contact, like your skin is searing him, but he draws closer all the same. 

“Do you understand it well?” He asks, his breath shaking as you move your body closer to him. 

“Yeah.” You breathe out. His hand draws a line up your arm, ghosting over your skin and sending shivers through your body. You can feel your heart hammer against your ribcage and that beast on your shoulder is roaring now, screaming your affection. You think for a moment that he’s been able to hear what it says this whole time and you wonder if he’s got one to match. 

“For how long?” His face is a mere inch from yours now and his breath fans out across your face. 

You suck in a sharp breath and wrap your arms around his neck, pulling your body into his lap. Tendou leans back and moves his hands to your hips like it’s second nature. You can feel his waist against your knees and the press of his thighs against the back of yours. 

“Long enough.” 

“Yeah?” He exhales. 

“Mhm.” 

“I’m flattered.” Tendou says it breathlessly, like he’s truly touched by your desire to learn to speak with him in the language he grew up speaking in. He’s made space and accommodated those around him in his refuge, in the chocolate shop where he’s created something of a safe haven for people like him, but he speaks like you are the first to do the same for him. You can feel it in his fingertips and the way they squeeze lightly at your hips. 

Then, he puts his lips to yours and it burns like fire. It’s gentle at first, just the press of his mouth against yours before he parts his lips to deepen it. You feel yourself sink, that tentativeness melting away as you inhale and let your lips mold against his. His hands come up to wrap around your back and you feel as he swipes his tongue at your bottom lip. 

The only sound in the room is the clicking of your mouths and the roar of blood in your ears. You both grow more desperate the further you fall into it and you’re certain now that the object of your attraction is not smooth nor coarse, but scalding hot because it burns the shell of your ear when it speaks into it, when it tells you to tell him that you know. 

“I understood it.” You speak against his mouth, obliging the little monster that now lives in you. “The first time.” 

Tendou nods into you, lips still connected with yours. “I know.” 

And the looks make sense, the way he studied you when you greeted Kageyama, the sly grin over the apples of his cheeks and the suspicious glances he gave you that night before he told you how he felt in a language you assumed he thought to be foreign to you. It is all so unbearably sexy that you find your breath stolen from you. It burns across your mind, leaving you scorched and stupid. Tendou had you figured out from the beginning, he has you figured out now, smiling into the way you deepen the kiss with a low whine. 

Your need is on the table and his follows. He grows stiff under you, pressing into the side of your thigh as you kiss him, as your tongues tangle. You feel the way his desire bleeds out into the way he holds you, how his fingers crawl and press up your spine just to feel the way you shiver. They push along the line of it, finding that dip that runs along the center of your back and following it up until his hand grasps the back of your neck firmly. 

“Thought you might have been keeping a secret.” He mumbles, using his other hand the guide your hips across his lap. “You’re a bad liar.” 

You don’t have a response, instead tilting your head down to take more control. He lets you, groaning into your mouth as you move your hips across him. Tendou laughs lightly at you, his eyes slightly open to watch how your brows furrow in concentration. 

He holds the back of your neck with a firm grip before drawing his hand from your hip to the seam of your pants. He cups your cunt over the fabric and pushes against the seam. You gasp and he lets out a low laugh when your lips still, distracted by the long-needed touch. Tendou’s fingers tease over the fabric, breath low and labored to match yours. You pull away from his lips, tilting your head down to watch the way his knuckles brush against your crotch, taking your bottom lip between your teeth. 

“You wanna take these off?” He asks, dragging his eyes back up to you slowly.

“Yeah…” You nod, standing up and slipping them down your hips. Tendou watches with hungry eyes, still lazy looking but full of desire. You realize that he’s been looking at you like this for quite some time. You feel heat burn at your cheeks before he beckons you back, reaching out and placing his hands on the bare skin of your hips. 

Tendou keeps you standing, running his thumbs in circles over the fabric of your panties on either side of your hips. You feel him drinking in the way your skin looks, the way the cloth of your underwear pastes itself to your sticky cunt and he licks his lips, leaning forward until his face is an inch from it. 

“Can I?” He smirks up at you and you finally get to run your hands over the top of his head, nodding your approval. 

Tendou presses his face to your crotch and you feel his tongue snake out to press on your clit over the fabric. You gasp at the feeling of it, the way heat and warmth spreads through your folds as he mouths at you over your panties. It’s dirty and makes you feel embarrassed, but it’s quickly forgotten as he teases, working up your need for him with a skilled mouth. 

He dampens the fabric further with his lips and tongue, pulling at it with his teeth before burying his face back into you. The layer between the heat of his mouth and your pussy has you keening. You press him closer by the back of his head as if it would remove your underwear with your need alone. 

Tendou leans away from you, licking his lips and smiling. “You’re so pretty.” 

Heat floods your face and you feel yourself grow impossibly wetter. Tendou hooks his fingers around the seam of your panties, pulling them outward and down your thighs. The fabric slides down, raising goosebumps on the surface of your skin. He sucks in a sharp breath when they finally fall, hungry eyes consuming what lies between your legs and when you step out of them, he pockets the fabric. You don’t say anything about it, biting your bottom lip as he leans back and discards his shirt to the side. 

Tendou is built with lean muscle. It runs in slight lines across his body. He’s as lanky as you thought he would be, but more defined as well because you can see the outline of his abdomen when he breathes. It pushes against the skin while still maintaining a soft look. When he puts his hands on your bare hips and guides you back to his lap, you feel the way there is a give, his stomach soft to the touch. It makes you moan, running your hands from his tummy to his shoulders where you squeeze them. 

He toys with the hem of your shirt next before you raise your arms to let him pull it off of you. You lean forward, pressing your skin against his and taking his lips in yours once again. Tendou deepens it immediately. He goes in open-mouthed and greedy, slowly devouring you whole like you are the sweets he loves so dearly. 

You feel his fingers toy with the hook on your bra. It takes him a moment, but when you feel the pressure release, you lean back and shrug it off of your shoulders. Tendou gapes at the flesh thats been revealed to him, wrapping a hand around one and immediately taking a nipple into his mouth. You arch your back forward, gasping at his grip on it, the way your flesh dips to the curve of his fingers. 

Simultaneously, he drags a finger down your stomach until it rests at the crest of your sex. You move your hips forward and he looks up at you from where he is latched to your nipple. His lips curl up in a wry smile, tongue flicking out to tweak it before he slowly draws a circle around your clit. 

Your body curves to meet him. It shifts and molds until it fits against his, until your chest is pressed against his mouth in a way that makes him groan and close his eyes. Tendou sucks at your chest, his fingers squeezing at the skin around where his lips close on your nipple. 

He moves his fingers back and forth across your slit, rubbing circles into your bare cunt until you reach down between you to unbutton his black jeans. Tendou grabs your wrist, leaning his cheek on your chest and clicking his tongue. His lips curl up in a little smile, small and affectionate and needy as he moves your hand up to your chest and closes your fingers around your neglected breast. 

“Let’s take care of you first. We’ll get there.” He chides, his voice taking on a pleasant lilt that is delightfully characteristic of him. 

You nod your response, rolling your breast in your fingers and pinching the nipple between your pointer and middle finger. Tendou’s fingers slip down and tease at the entrance to your cunt, sliding across the skin as he collects wetness on his fingers. Then, he smiles at you and places a kiss to the skin above your breast before slowly sliding a finger into you. 

It’s long and he curls it forward experimentally before he finds that spongy spot inside of you. He gives you a wry grin when you gasp, looking up at you from where you’re perched in his lap. 

“There it is…” Tendou momentarily pulls his finger out before adding another, his voice barely above a whisper. 

He curls them forward with more intent this time, moving his fingers with the way your body twitches and shifts. His hand leaves your breast to hold your hips, moving from the side of them to your back where the heat of his palm bleeds into your skin. Tendou gasps when you do as he builds up a more purposeful pace. He mimics the sounds you make in a way that makes you feel comfortable. Not as if he’s mocking, but rather, as if his enamoration with you let’s him feel what you do. It’s like, in pleasuring you, Tendou feels pleasure himself because each time he presses his fingers into your g-spot, you feel his cock stir in his pants. 

You are being picked apart slowly but surely. With each curl of his fingers, Tendou unlocks a deeper part of you, he stirs your stomach up more and weakens your muscles until you are gasping on his shoulder. He experiments with what you like, sometimes pressing and other times massaging until he finds the perfect medium that has you sighing deeply into the shell of his ear. 

Your greed takes over and you reach down to unzip his pants. Tendou’s hand comes up to cup the back of your head as you palm over him. He turns his head so that his lips rest against your ear, mumbling. “Don’t wanna do this here. Let’s go to the bedroom, ‘kay?” 

You pull away breathless, nodding and giving a small okay before he leans forward and kisses you. It’s chaste but needy, as if he were pressing pause without losing the tension. Tendou places his hands on your hips and moves you until you’re standing, supporting you until you gain your strength back in your legs. Then, he stands, pants still unbuttoned to make space for the bulge of his cock. 

Tendou smiles at you, looking over your figure before he takes your hand and guides you through the hallway and into the door on the right that leads to his bedroom. You feel exposed standing stark naked in his room, but take a moment regardless to admire the trinkets. He pulls you to him with both hands at the foot of the bed, wrapping his arms around your waist and clasping them behind your back. Tendou leans forward to kiss you, slowly at first, working you back up until you’re pressing your body against his again. 

He backs you up slowly until the back of your legs hits the mattress and then crouches as you sit before standing to his full height again. You slide yourself back against the soft fabric of his comforter until you are entirely on the bed, sitting up on your elbows as he looks at you. 

“God, you are just…” He rakes his sleepy eyes over you, “something else.” 

He lays down on his stomach on the bed until his face is right in front of your bare cunt. “Spread your legs.” 

Tendou runs his hand up the inside of your leg and you oblige, bending your knees and parting them for him. He smirks up at you before diving in, lickin a long stripe from the bottom of your cunt to the top. He tastes and then he devours, sucking on your clit before moving his mouth down and pushing his tongue past the ring of your cunt. 

His nose nudges against your clit and he moves his head side to side in order to give you much needed friction. Tendou buries his face between your legs, obscene slurping sounds growing louder as he works his tongue over you. You toss your head back against the pillows with a gasp, feeling the way Tendou smiles against you. 

He stays there laid out on the bed between your legs for a while. Tendou works you up and then lets you fall back down before doing it all of again. He teases and then gives you what you want, working his tongue around the folds of your cunt in the same experimental way he did with his fingers. It makes you needy and desperate, brows creased when he steals the build up to yet another orgasm from you with a low laugh. 

His hands rub up and down your thighs in admiration, feeling the skin there and burning across you until you can feel nothing but him. Even the bedspread below you is lost, replaced only by the caress of his greedy fingers until you are nearing your high. 

It builds sharp and in your gut, concentrated at in the nerves at your clit and humming through your thighs. You warn him through baited breath that you’re close, voice soft and pillowy. He smiles into you again, looking at you through his lashes before he chuckles and closes his eyes. “Go ahead.” 

You crest and then crash in one heaving breath, back arching up off the bed as Tendou chases you with his mouth. He latches onto your clit through your orgasm, flicking his tongue lightly as to not yet overstimulate you and then he comes up with a sigh, pulling his head back and sitting up on his elbows. His hands still rest on your thighs and he hums happily when you run your hands over his buzzcut, fingers scratching at his head. 

Tendou stands from the bed and discards his pants, somehow managing to make such a mundane moment still seep with appeal. He watches you the whole time. You can almost see the way he eyes draw a line from your dripping cunt, to your heaving chest, and finally to your eyes. You watch as he palms himself through his boxers for a moment before grinning at you and pulling them down as well. Tendou steps out of them and walks back to the edge of the bed, you feel his knees hit it before he leans forward and crawls over you. 

Your mouth waters at the view, at the slow and predatory way he crawls up your body before his head is above yours. He hovers there a moment and then leans down to kiss you, snaking his tongue into your mouth and pressing it against yours. You moan, and between you both, his cock jumps. 

You reach down between the two of you and take him in your hand, feeling what you’ve been so curious about these past few months. He’s long to match the rest of his body and not so wide that you’re intimidated. Tendou’s cock curves to the side, you feel it when you pump your fist up his length and follow the path of it. Above you, he screws his eyes shut and let’s his head fall forward to glance down between you. 

He moves his hips so that the head of his cock is nudging your clit, holding his weight up with both arms on either side of you and expecting you to guide him where he needs to go. 

When he presses the head of his cock against the entrance to your cunt, you gasp, letting go of his dick and bracing your hands on his shoulders. Tendou smiles down at you in that mischievous way that is characteristic of him, like he knows something you don’t. It makes you nervous and needy, arching your back up to take in even a fraction more. Then, he bottoms out slowly, pushing into you with a low groan that tapers into a whine. 

“You’re so warm.” He says it with an airy tone, something between teasing and disbelief and you screw your eyes shut in embarrassment. 

Tendou pulls his hips back slightly, starting slow and fucking his hips into you with careful precision, like he’s trying to memorize the feel of your sticky cunt before he’s ruined it. It’s so slow that you can hear the way his cock slides through your wetness, cheeks burning. 

His movements are laguid and measured, careful to hit the deepest parts of you and when you feel his hips flush against yours, pressure builds in your throat. But you know you need more. Your body is aching for it, cunt pulsing around the steady and short fucks of his cock. When you choke out a moan, low and shaking, he peers down at you with that same wry smile. 

“You like it?” He asks. It’s such a familiar question, the same one he asked you about the treats he brings to the shop but it bleeds with something ulterior. It drips from his lips like sugar and forces its way into your mouth, eliciting a needy yes that comes out as more of a whine than a comment. “You want some more?” 

He teases, still fucking his hips at that maddeningly slow pace. You dig your nails into his shoulders, looking at him with bleary eyes. “ God , yes. I want more. I like it so much.” 

Tendou clicks his tongue, rolling his head back on his shoulders. You feel something shift, the tender romanticism that was present before turns into something else and the air grows thick like syrup before it leaves your lungs entirely. He peers down at you and smiles in a sickeningly affectionate way, one that bleeds admiration before he pecks your lips once and sighs out a needy okay . 

Then, he shifts his weight and drags a hand to the underside of your thigh, hoisting it up and pressing it to your chest. He buries himself deeper before pulling nearly all the way out and pushing back in sharply. You feel it in your stomach, that deep pressure as he gives you more of what you’ve been craving. You cry out, eyes screwing shut as you choke back a mix of relief and desire. 

Tendou raises his eyebrows at you in mock shock, teasing once again. “Oh, yeah ?” He does it again, harder this time. 

“Yeah,” you grab at his back, begging for more, “yeah.” 

And finally, Tendou starts fucking you like he means it. He pulls his hips back and snaps them into you with deep groans, rubbing against the gummy spot inside of you. It sends you reeling, pulling at the skin on his shoulder blades with need. It twists your stomach into knots and has your eyes fluttering shut at the feeling, just trying to take it as best you can. Tendou is overwhelming and everywhere, he presses your knee to your chest and groans deeply when you clench around him. 

You lean forward, mouthing against his shoulder before he laughs. “You need something to suck on?” Tendou coos, like the same way he’d say coucou , and then he smiles. “Try this.” 

Then, he puts his mouth to yours and sticks his tongue out. You suck on it, whining as he fucks his hips into you. Your teeth graze the smooth muscle every now and then and he closes his eyes and furrows his brows when you do, groaning deeply as you work your lips around the slick muscle.

Tendou kisses you with an open mouth, hot and needy. It’s like he tries to suck the air from your body, hips still moving at that hard and steady pace that sends you a little further up the bedspread. Each pump has him hitting the deepest part of you and you feel the heat building and spreading through your body. 

It clouds your mind as he suffocates you with the press of him against you and his lips on yours. When he pulls away, you chase him with your mouth, gasping at the heat that gathers in your face as well. 

“Shhh, I’m gonna get you there. Don’t worry.” Tendou’s voice drips with honey. It spills liquid chocolate and coats you over until you are candied. 

He wraps your leg around his waist and then reaches up to slide a finger across your tongue. Tendou presses down on your mouth in fascination, watching the way drool pools in the dip his finger creates. Then, he leans forward and kisses you, taking the spit from your mouth with a deep groan. 

“ Fuck …” He breathes and then, he sticks his tongue out and lets it fall back into your mouth. You take it back with a needy moan, eyes fluttering shut. 

Tendou slides two of his fingers back across your tongue, his hips beginning to stutter as he watches the way you suck them. He experiments here too, seeing how far back he can push them before you gag, gauging if you like it and then he decides that you do. 

“You get so tight when I do this.” That sick sound comes from the back of your throat again, the one he likes, and then tears collect at your waterline. “Like having something in your pretty mouth?” 

You nod around his fingers and he smiles down at you. “You’re so sweet.” The words send butterflies crawling up your spine and you arch towards him. 

Tendou bleeds affection. His hands smear it on your body and his lips whisper words of adoration that are a stark contrast to the way he’s fucking you. You wrap both of your legs around him, sucking on his fingers as he tells you about how good you feel. 

“Seems like you’re gonna come again.” He chides, letting his head dangle as his fingers pry open your jaw. He shakes it slightly. “You’re clamping up on me. You wanna?” 

You moan your response, words incoherent around his fingers. “Please. I wanna come.” 

“Yeah? Look at you. You’re so polite.” He buries himself deep in you. “So well behaved when you’re like this. Where’s your attitude?” 

You choke out a sob, trying to hold off on coming undone around him. Your thighs squeeze at his waist in a silent plea and he grins at you and pulls his fingers from your mouth. “Okay, come. I wanna feel it.” 

Tendou closes his lips around yours, swallowing your moans as you hit your high. It rolls through you, deeper than the first and bubbling over at the base of your stomach. It sets your blood ablaze and you feel the way you lose yourself for a moment, unable to kiss him back and instead whimpering into his mouth. 

“There you go… There it is…” Tendou pulls back, talking you through it. He’s elated, you can hear it in his voice, the strain from both joy and pleasure. “Just like that, pretty. That’s how I like to see you.” 

He stills his hips, kissing you once and mumbling against your lips. “You’re so pretty when you come.” You can only nod through bleary eyes, chest heaving. “Come here.” 

Tendou unwinds your legs from his hips and flips you over so that you’re on top, straddling him. 

“I’m gonna come soon, okay? Want you to stay just like t-that when I do.” Tendou’s communicative, holding your hips and fucking himself up into you.

You’re overstimulated and sensitive, nodding and wrapping your fingers around his on your waist. Tendou gasps, screwing his eyes shut as he focuses on chasing his high. You see it build in him like it’s too much, those low groans giving way to needy whimpers. His fingers dig into your hips and you feel him twitch in succession before he babbles. 

“Where do you want it?” His teeth are gritted. 

“Inside.” You breathe out. “I want it inside.” 

Tendou’s eyes widen and he whines, tossing his head back against the pillow. “You’re on the pill?” You nod desperately and he bites down hard on his bottom lip. “ Fuck , okay… Shit.” 

His hips stutter up and then he holds you down hard on his cock as he spills into you. Tendou seems to lose his mind, first trying to watch as he fills you up before letting his head fall back and whining. You moan with him, twitching and squirming at the fill and press of his cock. 

Tendou’s fingers relax on your hips one by one. You put your hands on his chest, bracing yourself and feel as his body untenses in the wake of his orgasm. 

You breathe there for a moment and collect yourself, the both of you slowly coming back to your minds. When you open your eyes, you find that Tendou is already looking at you. His lips curl up in that wry grin, teasing and you laugh and hang your head down slightly. The beast on your shoulder is silent and satiated but ever present. You feel it when he reaches his hands up to your shoulders and pulls you to lay down on top of him. 

“We’ll clean up in a bit. I just want to sit here right now.” Tendou exhales. You nod against his chest. 

“Hey,” You start to ask a question. 

“Hi.” He responds and you roll your eyes, resting your chin on his chest.

“How long have you known that I was studying Japanese?” 

“Hm.” Tendou pauses, thinking for a moment. “Well, it wasn’t like I knew . I just suspected. But probably since I met up with you at Ushijima’s game.” 

“That long ago?” You sit up higher and Tendou smiles at you. It curls at the corner of his lips, eyes forming joyful curves above the slope of his cheek. “God, that’s embarrassing.” 

Tendou shakes his head. “Not really. I thought it was kind of nice. I don’t think anyone has done that for me before.” 

“Really?” You ask, craning your head to the side. 

“Yeah.” He exhales. “In high school people found me a bit odd and then when I moved to France I spent so much time trying to make a place where people could be comfortable that I kind of forgot to check if they thought about mine.” 

Tendou isn’t saying this as if he’s sad, but rather, as if it’s a fond memory. He speaks as if the work he put into making his chocolate shop a refuge is a point of pride. It should be. Somehow, Tendou has managed to create a space that is a lot like him. You hum. 

“I call you weird a lot. I’m sorry.” You breathe out, resting your cheek on his chest. 

Tendou laughs, wrapping an arm around your back. “Don’t be. Besides, I think I did pretty well for myself when it comes to you.” 

He looks down at you with a mischievous grin, licking his lips a little. 

“You’re awful.” You laugh and turn your head away from him. 

You feel Tendou’s chest shake with a laugh before he turns your head back towards him with his hand and kisses you. This one is slow and gentle, indicating his intentions behind this encounter. You will have to talk about it later. You know that at some point, you and Tendou will have to discuss where to go from here. But for now you let him sit you up from the bed and guide you to the bathroom where you’ll shower together and just talk. 

You run your fingers along the ridges of his body, feeling the weight behind them and watching him sway like he is made of cards. As the water runs over you both, Tendou tells you about his collection, about the people who have come and gone from his shop. He tells you about the figurines that he’s collected in his mind and the ones that he’s excited to collect in the future. 

And when he leans down to kiss you, slow and wet and through a cheeky smile, you think that he tastes sweeter than you expected. 

—

The bell chimes when you walk into his shop. It dings pleasantly and in a familiar way, ringing through your ears. Tendou is standing by the register beside a new face. They look nervous, watching him with furrowed brows as he explains the register to them. A new hire. 

“There they are!” Tendou bounces around the counter and up to you. “This,” he motions to you with two hands, “is your coworker. They can help you with stuff around here too.” 

Your new coworker is from Britain. They have curly brown hair and introduce themselves as David. You smile, following suit before walking to the back of the store and clocking in. You hear Tendou instruct the new hire to practice ringing up an assortment of chocolates before the familiar click of his shoes against the soft wood floors. He comes up behind you, smiling when you turn around. 

“Hi.” His words bleed affection and he leans forward to peck your lips. 

You smile at him, cheeks heating. “Hi.” 

“You look pretty today.” 

“You say that every day.” You roll your eyes. “Thank you.” 

Tendou hums that familiar delightful sound from the back of his throat before turning on his heel. Then, he swivels around one more time and places one last chaste kiss to your lips before walking back to David, calling out to him. “You done?” 

It’s been a month since you started officially dating Tendou. One month since you slept with him and decided the next day that you’d date him. In that time, Tendou has hired David and he is nervous like you were.

You walk over to where they stand behind the register, leaning against the counter while wearing Tendou’s wry grin. Now, you fit into the scenery here. You’re well situated amongst the honeywood floors and the music on the speakers playing foreign songs. Regulars know you by name and you’re certain that, when your new coworker looks at you, he sees matching Cheshire Cat ears to accompany your mischievous smile. 

It’s just Tendou and you once David clocks out. And when it’s your turn, you clock out then sit beside Tendou and watch as he tries a new recipe. 

“What’s that flavor?” You ask, peering over his shoulder as he pops one into his mouth.

“Cinnamon ganache. Wanna try?” He grins at you and you nod. 

Tendou leans forward and kisses you. He tastes like chocolate, a warm mix of spices. It’s a good flavor, slightly sweet and slightly bitter. You can’t help but laugh at the sudden way he puts his lips on yours, licking them once he pulls away. 

“It’s good but I want a whole one.” Tendou smiles at you before handing you one. 

Tendou’s chocolate shop is sleepy to match the sleepy look of its owner. It hums with calming energy, with the cultures of the people who come through the doors. Here, an amalgamation of languages reigns supreme. You speak all three and you find that you fit here beside him. 

You watch as Tendou pipes fillings into molds, occasionally glancing to the side to peer at you through his lashes and you fill in the gaps in your story to come. Those who work here might not be permanent. Some stay and some go. You are certain that you will be the former. 

You think to yourself that you will marry Tendou and the little beast on your shoulder, the thing that was once the object of your attraction—a niche object like the ones you pick up at garage sales—hums its satisfaction. You will stay and speak three languages with him, come to love this city the way you love this shop, the way you love Tendou. 

And you remind yourself each morning when the bell chimes as you walk in, that you will be a refuge to Tendou the way Tendou’s shop is a refuge to you. 

Tendou likes collecting freaks. Of the scores of figurines and people on his shelves, amongst the chocolates and the recipes and the secrets to playing a good game of volleyball, you are his favorite. Dusted and at the forefront of his mind, seated beside him in the spot by the window in the little chocolate shop at Saint Germaine-des-Pres.