Exactly what it says in the tin. The election has been/is a train wreck, so I'm writing sports anime fluff to deal. Pairings and theme will be marked in the subject of each reply.
"But Senpai, you promised!" Kise whined. He was sitting next to Kasamatsu, his whole makeup kit spread out on the table between them. "You said if I kept my fan club away from the gym and didn't get distracted a single time during practice this week, I could give you a makeover.
Kasamatsu scowled, clearly irritated to have ever been dragged into the ridiculous bet in the first place. It was too easy to forget that under Kise's flighty exterior lay an extremely competitive person who hated to lose more than perhaps anyone else the team.
Finally, Kasamatsu gave into Kise's pouting. "Fine," he sighed, "but it's going to look terrible. I was not made for eyeliner like that."
Kise reeled back in horror. "What!?" he exclaimed. "Absolutely not! It doesn't fit your style at all, and your eyes are the wrong shape for it, it'd look awful on you. No, you need something more subtle. Hmmm, like this I think." He opened a palette of brown eyeshadow and cupped one hand under Kasamatsu's chin, angling it exactly the way he wanted.
"You have such gorgeous eyes, Senpai," he murmured under his breath as he worked. "It's a pity no one else ever seems to notice them. They will now though, and then everyone will see how pretty you are."
The grass was soft and cool between Eiji's toes as he ran up the hill behind his house. Oishi had just sent him a message that he should go and watch the meteor shower. It would have been better if Oishi had been there to watch it with him, but Oishi was away visiting his grandparents.
He had just reached the top of the hill when he tripped over something in the grass and tumbled forward.
"Are you okay, Eiji?" a quiet voice asked from nearby.
"Ah, Fuji! I'm sorry! I didn't see you. What are you doing here?" he asked as his eyes picked out his teammate stretched out in the grass.
"Watching the meteor shower. Tezuka just sent me a message. Did Oishi tell you?"
"I wish they were here to watch it with us," he said wistfully.
"So do I," Fuji replied, "but this is kind of the same, isn't it? All of us watching the same sky. Look, there's a shooting star now." He pointed to the corner of the sky. "Make a wish."
Eiji squeezed his eyes shut and hoped as hard as he could.
"What did you wish for?" Fuji asked.
"Doesn't it make it not come true if I tell?"
"Not while we're still out here and it's just us and the sky."
"I wished that Oishi will come back safe and healthy so that we can play doubles together in Nationals," he said.
"I wished for Tezuka to be fully healed when he comes back so that I can play against him again. Look, there's another falling star."
Eiji lost track of how long they lay in the grass watching the stars and trading wishes, but eventually the meteors dropped off in frequency, and the cold started to creep in. He was just thinking about how he didn't want it to end when Fuji's hand found his in the grass.
"Did you know it's more than twice as strong if we combine our powers," Fuji said, twining their fingers together. He pointed up at the sky. "Look, there's one last meteor. Make our wish."
Eiji squeezed their hands together as hard as he could as he poured everything into his final wish.
"So what did we hope for?" Fuji asked as they sat up, their fingers still linked.
"That after we win Nationals, we'll all come up here as a team and watch the stars together."
All preparations were done, Eiji thought to himself as he tied on his apron and gave the ends of the bow one last satisfying tug. He was practically dancing in place to the music he had on in the background as he surveyed the kitchen. It was his and Oishi's first Valentine's Day as a couple, and he was determined to give Oishi a fitting gift.
He looked at the recipe one last time, took a deep breath, and turned on the stove. The key was not to rush anything he thought as he poked at the pieces of chocolate in the top of the double boiler; take everything nice and slow, and pay attention to the details.
It was easier said than done though, and he was bouncing back and forth impatiently by the time the chocolate finally started to soften. As soon as the last of it melted, he stuck his thermometer into the pot. He had seen enough cooking shows to know that scorched chocolate could ruin his endeavor faster than just about anything else.
As soon as it hit the correct temperature, he pulled it from the stove and poured it into the waiting molds. He was exceedingly proud of his molds; he had found them in the dollar store several months earlier, and had managed to keep them hidden from Oishi since.
With the first half of his project complete, he melted a little white chocolate, dyed it yellow, and dropped it into little circles on a sheet of wax paper. Before the hardened too much, he used the end of a straw to press the pattern of a tennis ball into their surfaces. Then he set those aside as well.
Even though he knew it would take everything several hours to cool completely, he couldn't stop himself from running back into the kitchen every five minutes to check on them. Once he thought they were ready, he made himself wait an extra hour before holding his breath and turning them out from the mold.
He grinned as the last chocolate released cleanly leaving him with an entire rack of shiny E's and O's. He was still smiling as he melted a small amount of the remaining chocolate and used it to attach a couple of the little tennis balls to the corner of each letter. By the time he finished cleaning up, they were ready, and he arranged them all neatly in a box before tying it with an oversized bow and putting it by the door to bring with him the next day. He couldn't wait to give them to Oishi.
"Maki-chan, why am I doing this again?" Toudou asked, staring at the boxes of clothes strewn across Makishima's living room floor.
"Request from Ren," Makishima replied. "He wants photos for his new catalog and asked me to help for some reason. The theme's 'individualized comfort'; these are some of the models."
"So what exactly are we doing with them?"
"Make whatever outfits you want. The photographer's going to be here in about half an hour."
"Fine," Toudou sighed, "but you owe me extra help on my English homework after this."
He started sorting through the box closest to him, holding up everything for inspection before tossing it aside. "I can't use any of this, Maki-chan!" he exclaimed several minutes later as the last shirt landed in his reject pile. "Like this shirt. It would be perfect if the sides were pulled up a bit! Or this skirt. It's completely flat right now, but if you gave it an asymmetric hem and let the lining show through?"
"Then do," Makishima said. "The sewing machine's on the kitchen table if you want it."
"Wait. Really!?"
"That's the point," Makishima said, gritting his teeth. "In•di•vi•du•a•liz•ed. You can customize it however you want."
"Awesome! Thanks, Maki-chan!" Toudou said as he gathered an armful of clothes. On his way out the door, he noticed the clothes Makishima was setting out, and he stopped dead.
"You aren't actually thinking of combining those, are you?" he asked in horror, pointing at a soft grey sweater sitting on top of a pair of bright blue pants with jagged yellow stripes.
"Why not?"
"They don't match at all!"
"Of course they do. It's like a cloud and lightning. I'd call it 'Thunderstorm,'" Makishima said. Then he pointed to the other, equally gaudy piles. "That one's 'Spring Rain,' and that one's 'Typhoon.'"
Toudou squinted. He still wasn't sure he saw it, but he had long ago given up trying to make sense of Makishima's style. There were some things that were better just accepted without question.
"Dad, what are you doing?" Kinjou asked when he came home from school one day to find Kaidou squinting at the computer with pages and pages of scrap paper and a calculator surrounding him.
"Shingo! What are you doing home this early!?" Kaidou asked, shoving the papers under a blank notepad.
"We cut practice a little short since we have that race tomorrow, remember?" Kinjou said. "I'm not home that early though; I usually get back around now."
"Really?" Kaidou looked frantically at the clock. "What happened to the time!? How am I going to finish this before your father gets back?"
"Finish what?"
Kaidou looked down. "Well, it's just that, since it's Valentine's Day, I wanted to do something for Inui," he mumbled.
"With a spreadsheet?" Kinjou asked, squinting over Kaidou's shoulder.
"It's a list of what I like about your father, except I thought I'd try to make it into a report since he likes those so much. I didn't think it would be that hard, but nothing's adding up right, and it keeps giving me errors every time I try to change anything."
"Can I take a look?" Kinjou asked. "I may be able to help."
"Please," Kaidou said desperately. "Inui's going to be home in less than two hours."
Kinjou dragged a chair from the kitchen table over to the computer and sat down. "What exactly are you trying to do?" he asked.
"I made a list of everything I liked about Inui and how much I liked each thing relative to the rest, and then there's this list of all the nice things Inui's done in the last month and how many times each one happened."
"Hmm, okay, pie chart for the first and bar graph for the second then?"
"I don't know! Will that fix it?"
"That's just how the data's going to be presented. It doesn't actually change any of the data you're putting in. What do you have so far?"
Kaidou turned the computer to face him, and Kinjou squinted at the screen.
"That's a…unique…approach to spreadsheets," he said finally. "Maybe I'll start a new tab, just so I don't, ah, interfere with your work. Do you have your raw data somewhere?"
"You mean this?" Kaidou asked, handing Kinjou several pages of his notes.
Kaidou glanced over the pages. "Yes. This will work fine," he said. "Just give me a couple of minutes." His fingers flew over the keyboard as he entered all of the relevant data points into his spreadsheet and set up the charts he wanted.
"How does this look?" he asked less than five minutes later, angling the screen back towards Kaidou.
"It's perfect! How did you do that?" Kaidou said. "I've been fighting it all day."
"It's just a matter of shifting your perspective to think like the computer," Kinjou said. "Why don't you go ahead and clean up your notes, and I'll print this out."
"Thank you, Shingo," Kaidou said several minutes later when Kinjou handed him the completed report (printed in full color and bound with a table of contents, index, and appendices no less). "You're a lifesaver."
"Anytime, Dad," Kinjou replied, awkwardly returning Kaidou's attempt at a hug.
"Why do you keep hiding?" Fukutomi demanded one night after dinner.
"What do you mean, hiding?" Toudou replied. "I said I was going to watch TV. How is that hiding?"
"You're going to go watch TV while I shower. What happened to us showering together? What happened to you dragging me to your family's ryokan so that we could soak in the onsen together? You haven't done that in over a year now; not since your accident," Fukutomi said pointedly, glancing down at Toudou's leg.
Toudou shrugged. "It takes me longer now," he said, "and I take up more space. I don't want to get in your way."
Fukutomi stared at him. "It's not just that. You don't change when I'm in the room anymore. If we're having sex, it's always with the lights dimmed. What happened? Do you think I'm so shallow I'll suddenly hate you because of a few scars or something."
"It's not just a few scars!" Toudou snapped. Then he turned away. "It's not you either. I was the Yamagami," he said more quietly. "How can I be a god if I'm a cripple?"
"Ever heard of Hephaestus?" Fukutomi asked, coming to stand beside Toudou. "He was both. Didn't let it stop him. More importantly, You. Are. Beautiful"—he poked Toudou's chest on each word for emphasis—"No one's going to convince me otherwise. And I want to shower with you tonight."
"Fine," Toudou said, "but don't say I didn't warn you."
Fukutomi glared at him until he turned away and started for the bedroom. "I'll meet you in there," he called back over his shoulder.
Fukutomi was already in the shower by the time Toudou arrived. He left his crutches outside the door and tried not to look up as he made the awkward transition to the stool that was always inside for him.
"I told you this would be awkward," he said as soon as he was settled. "What am I supposed to do now?"
"First, you'll let me wash your back, because you've complained for years about how much you hate doing it yourself," Fukutomi said, already spreading shower gel on his hands.
"I don't see how you don't. It's hard to reach, and how are you supposed to know if you missed a spot? And on top that—oh, that feels good, Fuku," Toudou said as Fukutomi's fingers pressed into the knots in his shoulders. "God, I had forgotten how good you were at this."
Fukutomi just grunted in reply as he continued working his hands across every inch of Toudou's back. Except for Toudou's contented humming, there was silence until Fukutomi was rinsing the last of the soap off of his back.
"Fuku, thank you," Toudou said finally. "Now kneel down so I can wash your hair. Don't think I haven't noticed you've been skimping on conditioning recently."
"Renji, look at this!" Sadaharu said excitedly one day as he rushed across the tennis court to meet him, and somehow Renji knew their tennis practice was going to be delayed. Sadaharu took off his sunglasses, took his spare pair out of his pocket, and held them up one in front of the other. "See? If I hold them up like this, then they're just like extra dark sunglasses, but if I do this—" he rotated one pair until it was perpendicular to the other "—then you can't see anything through them at all!"
"Of course, Sadaharu," Renji replied, pushing up his own sunglasses. "It's the polarization of the lenses. It's completely expected."
"Do yours do that too? Can I see?"
Renji sighed, but he took off his sunglasses, dug out his spare pair, and demonstrated the same effect.
"Have you ever tried putting different pairs together?" Sadaharu asked.
"No, I only have mine," Renji replied.
"We should try it now! And try different angles too! Do you have your protractor with you."
"Of course I do," Renji said, taking it out of his pocket. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he was excited for the experiment as well. He could always trust Sadaharu to come up with questions he hadn't thought to analyze before. "Do you have your notebook?"
Sadaharu nodded, already opening to a new page and writing "Notes on the Behavior of Sunglasses: Data Collected by Inui Sadaharu and Yanagi Renji," across the top along with the date. He started to draw a table on the page, then stopped and looked up expectantly.
"Start at zero degrees and work in thirty degree increments?" Renji suggested.
Sadaharu nodded. "Your glasses will be L1 and R1. Mine will be L2 and R2," he said as he filled out the table. "There! Ready to start. You go first."
"Oi, Asahi, relax will ya?" Tanaka yelled. Even from halfway across the gym, he could see Asahi practically vibrating with tension. Asahi jumped at the sudden noise, tripping over his feet as he turned around. Tanaka sighed, though he wasn't entirely surprised. Clearly this was going to call for a more intensive intervention.
"Suga, Daichi, I'm borrowing our ace for a few minutes," Tanaka declared.
Suga waved his hand. "Just have him back in time for the game. We start in ten minutes."
Tanaka ran across the gym. "Asahi, you're with me," he said as he grabbed Asahi by the wrist. "Locker room. Now."
"What did I do wrong?" Asahi stuttered. "Did I forget something? I'm wearing the right uniform, right? My shoes aren't untied?"
"Sit," Tanaka ordered once they were in the locker room, nudging Asahi to sit down in front of the benches by the lockers. "I'm going to do your hair."
"What's wrong with my hair? I just redid it when we got here."
"There's nothing wrong with your hair," Tanaka said as he sat down behind Asahi and took out the elastic holding in Asahi's ponytail. "But there's something wrong with you. Namely that you're tenser than an overstretched rubber band, and there's no way you're going to play well like this."
"Sorry," Asahi mumbled. "It's just, it's Datekou out there, and they're intimidating. Did you see how big they are?"
Tanaka made a noncommittal noise as he started combing Asahi's hair. "Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better," he said. "Unless it's you, in which case it means there's more of you to hug." He smiled as he watched the tips of Asahi's ears turn bright red.
"They're still scary," Asahi said, but he already seemed less tense than he had a couple of minutes earlier. Tanaka didn't remember exactly when he had figured out that Asahi played with his hair to calm himself down, or when he had realized that the same effect was magnified when it was someone else playing with his hair for him, but he hadn't hesitated to use that fact to his advantage since.
He kept up a stream of light chatter as he combed Asahi's hair, doing nothing other than watching Asahi slowly relax under him. When he judged they were starting to run out of time, he set aside the comb and pulled Asahi's hair back into it's regular ponytail.
"All done. Up you go," he said, nudging Asahi's back with his knee. "Let's go take down the big scary guys."
Asahi stood and immediately pulled him into a hug. "Thank you," he whispered. "Let's go."
Toudou didn't think anyone else even noticed it, but to him the sound was unmistakable. He heard it even with all of the background chatter of his classmates before the morning bell rang. It was the sound of a fingernail breaking.
He looked up and immediately pinpointed its source. Across the room, Fukutomi was glaring at his finger as if it had personally offended him. He started to raise the hand to his mouth, and Toudou practically flew across the room to stop him.
"Fuku, don't you dare!" he said. "You're going to hurt yourself that way. Not to mention you'll ruin your nails. I'll be right back. Don't move."
Before Fukutomi could protest, he rushed back to his desk and took his emergency nail care kit out of his bag.
"The appropriate way to deal with a broken nail is not not rip it off," he said when he returned, pulling a chair from a nearby empty desk over to beside Fukutomi's. "First, you trim off the broken bit as best you can," he explained, demonstrating on the offending nail. "Then, you use an emery board or a file to even it out and reshape it as best you can. If there were more time, you could put a clear coat over it to help prevent it from breaking again, but the bell's about to ring, so that's going to have to do."
He stood and put the chair back where it belonged. Fukutomi was still frozen in place, looking a bit stupefied by what had just happened, but Toudou could live with that. His captain would thank him later when he didn't have an infected hangnail distracting him while he was riding.
Now if he could just convince Arakita to do something about his claws.
Take the string on the left, cross it over, knot. Cross over again, knot. One more time, knot. Repeat from the right, then knot the two in the center. Start over with the new outside left.
Making friendship bracelets really was kind of relaxing, Ennoshita thought as he waited for the simulation on his computer to finish running. It gave him something to do with his hands that wasn't fiddling with mock-ups of circuit boards, and it gave his mind a break too. He loved his job, but he could only stare at circuits for so long before his mind started spinning in circles.
His computer pinged, and he set the half-finished friendship bracelet aside. He looked at his screen and frowned; his simulation had failed again, and for the same reasons he'd been struggling with for days. Sighing, he went back to his prototype and started reviewing all of the circuits yet again. Several hours later, after adding a few more resistors to one circuit, removing one from another, and changing the specifications on a couple of capacitors, he crossed his fingers, hit the button, and took out his bracelets again while he waited for his new design to render.
He ended up working a few hours late, but by time he left, he not only had a working model to prototype the next day, he also had two new matching bracelets.
It took him another half hour to commute home, but like always, he felt the warm swell in his heart as he opened the door and called, "I'm home."
"Welcome back. It's about time," Kuroo replied, coming to greet him and take his bag. "Koushi got caught up with a couple of last-minute sick visits, but he should be right behind you. He just got off the subway."
Sure enough, by the time Ennoshita finished taking off his shoes, he heard Suga's footsteps coming down the hallway.
"Welcome home," he said as the door opened again. "Now close your eyes, both of you. I have a surprise for you." Suga couldn't wear friendship bracelets at the hospital, so Ennoshita tied his around the strap of his bag with the others. Then he tied Kuroo's around his wrist, adding to the growing collection that already stretched partway up his forearm.
"Happy Wednesday," he said as they opened their eyes. "Have I mentioned recently how much I love both of you?"
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KiKasa: Makeover
Kasamatsu scowled, clearly irritated to have ever been dragged into the ridiculous bet in the first place. It was too easy to forget that under Kise's flighty exterior lay an extremely competitive person who hated to lose more than perhaps anyone else the team.
Finally, Kasamatsu gave into Kise's pouting. "Fine," he sighed, "but it's going to look terrible. I was not made for eyeliner like that."
Kise reeled back in horror. "What!?" he exclaimed. "Absolutely not! It doesn't fit your style at all, and your eyes are the wrong shape for it, it'd look awful on you. No, you need something more subtle. Hmmm, like this I think." He opened a palette of brown eyeshadow and cupped one hand under Kasamatsu's chin, angling it exactly the way he wanted.
"You have such gorgeous eyes, Senpai," he murmured under his breath as he worked. "It's a pity no one else ever seems to notice them. They will now though, and then everyone will see how pretty you are."
Eiji & Fuji: Stargazing
He had just reached the top of the hill when he tripped over something in the grass and tumbled forward.
"Are you okay, Eiji?" a quiet voice asked from nearby.
"Ah, Fuji! I'm sorry! I didn't see you. What are you doing here?" he asked as his eyes picked out his teammate stretched out in the grass.
"Watching the meteor shower. Tezuka just sent me a message. Did Oishi tell you?"
"I wish they were here to watch it with us," he said wistfully.
"So do I," Fuji replied, "but this is kind of the same, isn't it? All of us watching the same sky. Look, there's a shooting star now." He pointed to the corner of the sky. "Make a wish."
Eiji squeezed his eyes shut and hoped as hard as he could.
"What did you wish for?" Fuji asked.
"Doesn't it make it not come true if I tell?"
"Not while we're still out here and it's just us and the sky."
"I wished that Oishi will come back safe and healthy so that we can play doubles together in Nationals," he said.
"I wished for Tezuka to be fully healed when he comes back so that I can play against him again. Look, there's another falling star."
Eiji lost track of how long they lay in the grass watching the stars and trading wishes, but eventually the meteors dropped off in frequency, and the cold started to creep in. He was just thinking about how he didn't want it to end when Fuji's hand found his in the grass.
"Did you know it's more than twice as strong if we combine our powers," Fuji said, twining their fingers together. He pointed up at the sky. "Look, there's one last meteor. Make our wish."
Eiji squeezed their hands together as hard as he could as he poured everything into his final wish.
"So what did we hope for?" Fuji asked as they sat up, their fingers still linked.
"That after we win Nationals, we'll all come up here as a team and watch the stars together."
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Eiji/Oishi: Valentine's Day
He looked at the recipe one last time, took a deep breath, and turned on the stove. The key was not to rush anything he thought as he poked at the pieces of chocolate in the top of the double boiler; take everything nice and slow, and pay attention to the details.
It was easier said than done though, and he was bouncing back and forth impatiently by the time the chocolate finally started to soften. As soon as the last of it melted, he stuck his thermometer into the pot. He had seen enough cooking shows to know that scorched chocolate could ruin his endeavor faster than just about anything else.
As soon as it hit the correct temperature, he pulled it from the stove and poured it into the waiting molds. He was exceedingly proud of his molds; he had found them in the dollar store several months earlier, and had managed to keep them hidden from Oishi since.
With the first half of his project complete, he melted a little white chocolate, dyed it yellow, and dropped it into little circles on a sheet of wax paper. Before the hardened too much, he used the end of a straw to press the pattern of a tennis ball into their surfaces. Then he set those aside as well.
Even though he knew it would take everything several hours to cool completely, he couldn't stop himself from running back into the kitchen every five minutes to check on them. Once he thought they were ready, he made himself wait an extra hour before holding his breath and turning them out from the mold.
He grinned as the last chocolate released cleanly leaving him with an entire rack of shiny E's and O's. He was still smiling as he melted a small amount of the remaining chocolate and used it to attach a couple of the little tennis balls to the corner of each letter. By the time he finished cleaning up, they were ready, and he arranged them all neatly in a box before tying it with an oversized bow and putting it by the door to bring with him the next day. He couldn't wait to give them to Oishi.
Makishima & Toudou: Fashion
"Request from Ren," Makishima replied. "He wants photos for his new catalog and asked me to help for some reason. The theme's 'individualized comfort'; these are some of the models."
"So what exactly are we doing with them?"
"Make whatever outfits you want. The photographer's going to be here in about half an hour."
"Fine," Toudou sighed, "but you owe me extra help on my English homework after this."
He started sorting through the box closest to him, holding up everything for inspection before tossing it aside. "I can't use any of this, Maki-chan!" he exclaimed several minutes later as the last shirt landed in his reject pile. "Like this shirt. It would be perfect if the sides were pulled up a bit! Or this skirt. It's completely flat right now, but if you gave it an asymmetric hem and let the lining show through?"
"Then do," Makishima said. "The sewing machine's on the kitchen table if you want it."
"Wait. Really!?"
"That's the point," Makishima said, gritting his teeth. "In•di•vi•du•a•liz•ed. You can customize it however you want."
"Awesome! Thanks, Maki-chan!" Toudou said as he gathered an armful of clothes. On his way out the door, he noticed the clothes Makishima was setting out, and he stopped dead.
"You aren't actually thinking of combining those, are you?" he asked in horror, pointing at a soft grey sweater sitting on top of a pair of bright blue pants with jagged yellow stripes.
"Why not?"
"They don't match at all!"
"Of course they do. It's like a cloud and lightning. I'd call it 'Thunderstorm,'" Makishima said. Then he pointed to the other, equally gaudy piles. "That one's 'Spring Rain,' and that one's 'Typhoon.'"
Toudou squinted. He still wasn't sure he saw it, but he had long ago given up trying to make sense of Makishima's style. There were some things that were better just accepted without question.
Inui/Kaidou, Kaidou & Kinjou: Data Valentine
"Shingo! What are you doing home this early!?" Kaidou asked, shoving the papers under a blank notepad.
"We cut practice a little short since we have that race tomorrow, remember?" Kinjou said. "I'm not home that early though; I usually get back around now."
"Really?" Kaidou looked frantically at the clock. "What happened to the time!? How am I going to finish this before your father gets back?"
"Finish what?"
Kaidou looked down. "Well, it's just that, since it's Valentine's Day, I wanted to do something for Inui," he mumbled.
"With a spreadsheet?" Kinjou asked, squinting over Kaidou's shoulder.
"It's a list of what I like about your father, except I thought I'd try to make it into a report since he likes those so much. I didn't think it would be that hard, but nothing's adding up right, and it keeps giving me errors every time I try to change anything."
"Can I take a look?" Kinjou asked. "I may be able to help."
"Please," Kaidou said desperately. "Inui's going to be home in less than two hours."
Kinjou dragged a chair from the kitchen table over to the computer and sat down. "What exactly are you trying to do?" he asked.
"I made a list of everything I liked about Inui and how much I liked each thing relative to the rest, and then there's this list of all the nice things Inui's done in the last month and how many times each one happened."
"Hmm, okay, pie chart for the first and bar graph for the second then?"
"I don't know! Will that fix it?"
"That's just how the data's going to be presented. It doesn't actually change any of the data you're putting in. What do you have so far?"
Kaidou turned the computer to face him, and Kinjou squinted at the screen.
"That's a…unique…approach to spreadsheets," he said finally. "Maybe I'll start a new tab, just so I don't, ah, interfere with your work. Do you have your raw data somewhere?"
"You mean this?" Kaidou asked, handing Kinjou several pages of his notes.
Kaidou glanced over the pages. "Yes. This will work fine," he said. "Just give me a couple of minutes." His fingers flew over the keyboard as he entered all of the relevant data points into his spreadsheet and set up the charts he wanted.
"How does this look?" he asked less than five minutes later, angling the screen back towards Kaidou.
"It's perfect! How did you do that?" Kaidou said. "I've been fighting it all day."
"It's just a matter of shifting your perspective to think like the computer," Kinjou said. "Why don't you go ahead and clean up your notes, and I'll print this out."
"Thank you, Shingo," Kaidou said several minutes later when Kinjou handed him the completed report (printed in full color and bound with a table of contents, index, and appendices no less). "You're a lifesaver."
"Anytime, Dad," Kinjou replied, awkwardly returning Kaidou's attempt at a hug.
Fukutomi/Toudou: Beauty, cw: internalized ableism
"What do you mean, hiding?" Toudou replied. "I said I was going to watch TV. How is that hiding?"
"You're going to go watch TV while I shower. What happened to us showering together? What happened to you dragging me to your family's ryokan so that we could soak in the onsen together? You haven't done that in over a year now; not since your accident," Fukutomi said pointedly, glancing down at Toudou's leg.
Toudou shrugged. "It takes me longer now," he said, "and I take up more space. I don't want to get in your way."
Fukutomi stared at him. "It's not just that. You don't change when I'm in the room anymore. If we're having sex, it's always with the lights dimmed. What happened? Do you think I'm so shallow I'll suddenly hate you because of a few scars or something."
"It's not just a few scars!" Toudou snapped. Then he turned away. "It's not you either. I was the Yamagami," he said more quietly. "How can I be a god if I'm a cripple?"
"Ever heard of Hephaestus?" Fukutomi asked, coming to stand beside Toudou. "He was both. Didn't let it stop him. More importantly, You. Are. Beautiful"—he poked Toudou's chest on each word for emphasis—"No one's going to convince me otherwise. And I want to shower with you tonight."
"Fine," Toudou said, "but don't say I didn't warn you."
Fukutomi glared at him until he turned away and started for the bedroom. "I'll meet you in there," he called back over his shoulder.
Fukutomi was already in the shower by the time Toudou arrived. He left his crutches outside the door and tried not to look up as he made the awkward transition to the stool that was always inside for him.
"I told you this would be awkward," he said as soon as he was settled. "What am I supposed to do now?"
"First, you'll let me wash your back, because you've complained for years about how much you hate doing it yourself," Fukutomi said, already spreading shower gel on his hands.
"I don't see how you don't. It's hard to reach, and how are you supposed to know if you missed a spot? And on top that—oh, that feels good, Fuku," Toudou said as Fukutomi's fingers pressed into the knots in his shoulders. "God, I had forgotten how good you were at this."
Fukutomi just grunted in reply as he continued working his hands across every inch of Toudou's back. Except for Toudou's contented humming, there was silence until Fukutomi was rinsing the last of the soap off of his back.
"Fuku, thank you," Toudou said finally. "Now kneel down so I can wash your hair. Don't think I haven't noticed you've been skimping on conditioning recently."
Inui & Yanagai: Data Collection
"Of course, Sadaharu," Renji replied, pushing up his own sunglasses. "It's the polarization of the lenses. It's completely expected."
"Do yours do that too? Can I see?"
Renji sighed, but he took off his sunglasses, dug out his spare pair, and demonstrated the same effect.
"Have you ever tried putting different pairs together?" Sadaharu asked.
"No, I only have mine," Renji replied.
"We should try it now! And try different angles too! Do you have your protractor with you."
"Of course I do," Renji said, taking it out of his pocket. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he was excited for the experiment as well. He could always trust Sadaharu to come up with questions he hadn't thought to analyze before. "Do you have your notebook?"
Sadaharu nodded, already opening to a new page and writing "Notes on the Behavior of Sunglasses: Data Collected by Inui Sadaharu and Yanagi Renji," across the top along with the date. He started to draw a table on the page, then stopped and looked up expectantly.
"Start at zero degrees and work in thirty degree increments?" Renji suggested.
Sadaharu nodded. "Your glasses will be L1 and R1. Mine will be L2 and R2," he said as he filled out the table. "There! Ready to start. You go first."
Re: Inui & Yanagai: Data Collection
Asahi/Tanaka: Relax
"Suga, Daichi, I'm borrowing our ace for a few minutes," Tanaka declared.
Suga waved his hand. "Just have him back in time for the game. We start in ten minutes."
Tanaka ran across the gym. "Asahi, you're with me," he said as he grabbed Asahi by the wrist. "Locker room. Now."
"What did I do wrong?" Asahi stuttered. "Did I forget something? I'm wearing the right uniform, right? My shoes aren't untied?"
"Sit," Tanaka ordered once they were in the locker room, nudging Asahi to sit down in front of the benches by the lockers. "I'm going to do your hair."
"What's wrong with my hair? I just redid it when we got here."
"There's nothing wrong with your hair," Tanaka said as he sat down behind Asahi and took out the elastic holding in Asahi's ponytail. "But there's something wrong with you. Namely that you're tenser than an overstretched rubber band, and there's no way you're going to play well like this."
"Sorry," Asahi mumbled. "It's just, it's Datekou out there, and they're intimidating. Did you see how big they are?"
Tanaka made a noncommittal noise as he started combing Asahi's hair. "Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better," he said. "Unless it's you, in which case it means there's more of you to hug." He smiled as he watched the tips of Asahi's ears turn bright red.
"They're still scary," Asahi said, but he already seemed less tense than he had a couple of minutes earlier. Tanaka didn't remember exactly when he had figured out that Asahi played with his hair to calm himself down, or when he had realized that the same effect was magnified when it was someone else playing with his hair for him, but he hadn't hesitated to use that fact to his advantage since.
He kept up a stream of light chatter as he combed Asahi's hair, doing nothing other than watching Asahi slowly relax under him. When he judged they were starting to run out of time, he set aside the comb and pulled Asahi's hair back into it's regular ponytail.
"All done. Up you go," he said, nudging Asahi's back with his knee. "Let's go take down the big scary guys."
Asahi stood and immediately pulled him into a hug. "Thank you," he whispered. "Let's go."
Fukutomi/Toudou: Broken Nail
He looked up and immediately pinpointed its source. Across the room, Fukutomi was glaring at his finger as if it had personally offended him. He started to raise the hand to his mouth, and Toudou practically flew across the room to stop him.
"Fuku, don't you dare!" he said. "You're going to hurt yourself that way. Not to mention you'll ruin your nails. I'll be right back. Don't move."
Before Fukutomi could protest, he rushed back to his desk and took his emergency nail care kit out of his bag.
"The appropriate way to deal with a broken nail is not not rip it off," he said when he returned, pulling a chair from a nearby empty desk over to beside Fukutomi's. "First, you trim off the broken bit as best you can," he explained, demonstrating on the offending nail. "Then, you use an emery board or a file to even it out and reshape it as best you can. If there were more time, you could put a clear coat over it to help prevent it from breaking again, but the bell's about to ring, so that's going to have to do."
He stood and put the chair back where it belonged. Fukutomi was still frozen in place, looking a bit stupefied by what had just happened, but Toudou could live with that. His captain would thank him later when he didn't have an infected hangnail distracting him while he was riding.
Now if he could just convince Arakita to do something about his claws.
Ennoshita/Kuroo/Sugawara: Friendship Bracelets
Making friendship bracelets really was kind of relaxing, Ennoshita thought as he waited for the simulation on his computer to finish running. It gave him something to do with his hands that wasn't fiddling with mock-ups of circuit boards, and it gave his mind a break too. He loved his job, but he could only stare at circuits for so long before his mind started spinning in circles.
His computer pinged, and he set the half-finished friendship bracelet aside. He looked at his screen and frowned; his simulation had failed again, and for the same reasons he'd been struggling with for days. Sighing, he went back to his prototype and started reviewing all of the circuits yet again. Several hours later, after adding a few more resistors to one circuit, removing one from another, and changing the specifications on a couple of capacitors, he crossed his fingers, hit the button, and took out his bracelets again while he waited for his new design to render.
He ended up working a few hours late, but by time he left, he not only had a working model to prototype the next day, he also had two new matching bracelets.
It took him another half hour to commute home, but like always, he felt the warm swell in his heart as he opened the door and called, "I'm home."
"Welcome back. It's about time," Kuroo replied, coming to greet him and take his bag. "Koushi got caught up with a couple of last-minute sick visits, but he should be right behind you. He just got off the subway."
Sure enough, by the time Ennoshita finished taking off his shoes, he heard Suga's footsteps coming down the hallway.
"Welcome home," he said as the door opened again. "Now close your eyes, both of you. I have a surprise for you." Suga couldn't wear friendship bracelets at the hospital, so Ennoshita tied his around the strap of his bag with the others. Then he tied Kuroo's around his wrist, adding to the growing collection that already stretched partway up his forearm.
"Happy Wednesday," he said as they opened their eyes. "Have I mentioned recently how much I love both of you?"