like we've scaled skyscrapers

[rosevtea]

On Aran, the dethroning of Kita Shinsuke, the slow familiarity of a boba shop, and growing together.

for ace of hearts (aran zine)!! very fond of this one actually. very fond of arankita in general

When Kita holds the door open for him, Aran nudges his arm as he passes. It’s probably a testament to just about everything slotting into place that Kita does nothing more but tilt his head as he lets the door fall shut behind him.

For a time, such a gesture would have felt like a lightning strike, but right now Aran’s squinting at the menu as Kita falls into step next to him. “You gettin’ the usual? Think I’m gonna try something else for a change. Switch it up, y’know?”

“Yes,” Kita says. Scans the menu anyway to fulfill his standard of thorough investigation, which Aran has always admired even when he knows just how acquainted they both are with the dim pinpricks of light bearing down on their heads, the grime creeping into each tile on the floor, the dark wood lining the walls. “I don’t tend to deviate.”

Earl grey milk tea, honey pearls, no ice. Kita Shinsuke’s gold standard for variety.

“I figured.” Aran looks up, knowing the dimness breaks just enough for Kita to see the smile on his face. “You never change, do you?”

“No reason for me to.” But he sees the way the hard, questioning edges soften and—there’s a whole lot of things that become accessible after dethroning someone from their pedestal. Which took a while, in all honesty. It’s easier than it should be to slip into the chasm between reliability and naivety, to accept the clinical nature of Kita’s words and actions and attribute it to his heart, but to do that would be to rob him of his humanity.

Aran is privy to a routine after ordering: Kita sits at the table tucked away in the corner, very nearly covered in shadow. He takes the seat facing away from the window, leaving Aran to take the dreaded position of having to decide whether to greet a familiar face or pretend he doesn’t know them. Kita somehow intakes a perfect ratio of boba, then drink, then boba until his drink is gone while Aran is left chewing what he has left by the time they leave, and he’s accepted that no amount of complaining or replicating will ever produce the same results.

It’s simple, if he’s being honest, but simplicity can take the form of a thousand different fragments of comfort, and he’d like to think his relaxed posture means Kita’s getting something out of this too.

“So,” Aran starts after placing their drinks down, “we’re second years now. How’re you feeling?”

Kita takes a sip. “It’s been three days. But,” he amends when Aran raises an eyebrow, “that’s not what you’re askin’ me.”

“‘Course not.” Aran rests a hand on the table, dirt and all. He holds back a grimace. “I mean the added responsibility.”

Added reliability, he means to say, but it’s hard to say such a thing at face value when Kita’s already let the mundanity of consistency settle into the grooves of his very soul, allowed it to turn into the sort of stability that slots into any hole, no matter how jagged the shape. His confidence as quiet as it is enveloping, small frown lines the only outward evidence of his stubbornness.

“Responsibility,” Kita echoes. “Did you want to appear more responsible to the underclassmen?”

“You gotta stop predicting what I’m thinking,” Aran says, chuckling. “Are you a mind reader? I’m onto you now.”

“You ask questions like this when you’re nervous. Earlier, I noticed you talking to some of the underclassmen as well.” Kita places his drink down, laces his fingers together. “The year’s just started. You have yet to leave an appropriate impression on them, so I don’t think you need to worry.”

The thing is, Coach Kurosu has unsubtly been hinting at his capabilities at being the Ace his third year. Being an Ace calls for what amounts to leveling the earth for his team no matter the cost and the forms this can come in are insurmountable: the pillar of strength the rest of the team faces towards, the concrete holding them up, the momentum coalescing into a moment of triumph.

His dad once said, to be reliable is the most inconsistently consistent thing on this earth, and how the heck does he learn something that obtuse?

Then Kita says, “Our year already relies on you. Perhaps you can build on that,” and Aran stares at him for a long moment.

And bursts out laughing.

Who’s he trying to impress, the twins? What’s he doing searching for a meaning to reliability with a hunger more suited for Atsumu, anyway? He’s spent his entire life learning that people provide reliability for others in shards both large and small, both innate and with purpose. It’s no mirror he can piece together to copy, when the way he demonstrates it for other people will never be something he gets to decide, and that’s just the way human nature goes.

Kita looks ever so slightly alarmed. “Was that funny?”

“Not really.” Aran can’t help but snort. “You really gotta be like, a mind reader or a machine or something, I swear. I won’t tell anyone, promise.”

“I keep telling you I’m not.”

“Right.”

It’s the third day of school and he’s never settled—will never settle—for anything less than his best. That’s all anyone could ask of him.

.

“Third ain’t bad,” Kita murmurs thoughtfully. “The team grew stronger during the match.”

After Interhigh, the darkness always gathers around his shoes more intently. Almost murky, as if to drag him down into the depths. They had opted to skip the boba shop this time around, and the Open sign blinks at them like an elegy, haunting in the twilight as they pass.

“You think so?”

Aran had been on the court. Swapped in for a last minute miracle and here he is, watching the soles of his feet as violet scatters across the sky and the palms of his hands.

Reliability had no place in the court as the ball dropped for the last time, the chance he was given sliding down his shoulders as the thud registered in his head. It patted his shoulder in solidarity as he lifted up a bag and followed his upperclassmen away from prying eyes, watched disappointment color fingernails digging into arms blue, teeth gnawing on lips red.

Winning Interhigh hadn’t been realistic, but some undefined curiosity had wanted to be part of that tidal wave of longing. To win and stand as a testament to everyone on his side of the court because, when it came down to it, volleyball had every bone of his body in a vice grip.

But he had also looked at the first years, had watched Atsumu’s vicious desire fester with every break taken, seen the slight grin on Ginjima’s face as he tracked the ball, even bobbing his arms up to the cadence of each dig. Suna, at first glance, reflected the same apparent disinterest Osamu had for the game, but his gaze stayed trained on the middle blockers during every rotation. Quite an interesting set of underclassmen they’ve got, that’s for sure.

“I wanted to win,” he admits, “but you’re right. I can already see the first years stepping up.”

“You’d say,” Kita cuts in, “that we’d have something to look forward to now.”

“Ain’t that right.”

Aran nudges his shoulder. Partly as a premonition, partly to keep Kita himself from rising to some insurmountable height he can’t climb to. He has heard him laugh too many times to think of him as anything other than a teenage boy in reach.

.

After Spring High, holding the door open for Kita feels weirdly nostalgic. The warm aroma slipping through his veins, the genial smile Kita’s started gracing him with sometime after Interhigh, the spring breeze brushing past his blazer — they’ve all grown into an odd little chamber of his life, wearing away at his routine for long enough that they’ve solidified a place there.

“This feels familiar,” Kita mutters softly and Aran looks at him in disbelief. That’s it. No matter what Kita says, he’s utterly convinced that he’s a mind reader. C’mon, what are the odds of that timing?

But the changing of the seasons feels melancholic and he can’t bring himself to make his usual accusations, sensible as they are. Aran just huffs a laugh and listens to the quiet click of the door falling shut behind him.

“Isn’t it?” he eventually replies once he reaches Kita’s side. “Third again, ain’t that strange.”

Interestingly enough, Kita’s staring at the menu like he’s seriously considering the options for once. “Lucky coincidence,” he says absently, folding his hands together. “I’m not upset. I take it you’re not, either?”

“Nope.” It had been the same case as Interhigh. The first years were already slipping their way into the cracks left behind by the cracks their last plays had made apparent. The third years had known as well as he had, each placing a hand on his back like some unsaid baton pass. Really, it’d have been easier if everyone just said what they meant, but sappiness was never Inarizaki’s thing. It was their captain’s thing, though. “If anything, I was expecting a shorter speech.”

“Perhaps it had been a consequence of the year,” Kita muses, “for the third years to be so sentimental.”

“Yeah, probably.” Kita hasn’t moved an inch. Aran looks at him, then the menu, then at Kita again. “You getting your usual, or…?”

“Actually, I think I’ll get something new.”

Aran nearly trips over nothing, which is a perfectly reasonable response to Kita Shinsuke budging on this particular aspect of their tradition on this specific day. He’s gotta be messing with him.

“No offense,” Aran begins slowly, “but you’re scaring me right now. Where’d this come from, all of a sudden? You sure you’re alright?”

Though Aran is no stranger to Kita’s laugh, it isn’t usually this bright, this unburdened. He reigns himself in fairly quickly, but his frighteningly rare honesty isn’t forgettable in the slightest, especially out of nowhere like that.

“I’m fine.” Kita fixes him with a look. “The team’s changing, and nothing would be threatened by indulging right now.”

Aran frowns. “You don’t need some grand reason for indulging in the things you like!” He gestures to the menu. “Besides, I got the sense that you didn’t change your order just to dig your heels in. You’re awfully stubborn over the weirdest of things.”

“Am I?” Kita murmurs, thoughtful. Except—aha, he can see his mouth pulling upwards at the edges. It feels a little more like an invitation each time, to move beyond the dethroning and onto the flat plane of understanding. “Perhaps you can be the judge of that.”

“Don’t even start, you know it’s true!”

Kita chuckles, this time not bothering to cover his mouth with his hands.

After he orders (strawberry matcha milk tea, extra jelly, no ice), he glances at Aran as they sit with a level of steadiness that would’ve unnerved him back in the beginning of their first year and says, “It’s likely you’ll be the ace next year,” with the energy of delivering morning announcements.

Aran does not try to keep the bewilderment off his face. “What—where’d this come from?” He rolls his eyes, the fondness slipping in by accident. “You hanging out with the twins too much? I swear, Atsumu won’t stop bringing up next year’s lineup—”

“No,” Kita interrupts, “I just have a feeling.”

He sounds way too sure of himself. Hasn’t he ever watched old movies where the hero’s absolutely sure they’ve got it in the bag, then gets victory snatched by them at the last second?

“Kita—”

“The team we lost to was ravenous,” he continues. “They snatched victory like they were takin’ it from the gods themselves. They were that kind of team. Monsters, almost.” Kita looks at him and tilts his head, his fingers drumming against the drink. “I still don’t understand why people get nervous, but you were steady when you were switched in. Everyone was watching.”

Aran puts down his drink, a dizzying sort of understanding coming over him. He hadn’t done any particularly outstanding plays in the court—it had been a way of shaking up the team synergy, a useful replacement more than anything else. At least, that’s how he had seen it.

But then again, Kita doesn’t need to make any world-ending steps to glue the team together, does he? He’s just that unique brand of strict that scares the underclassmen straight. So if Aran could apply that same principle to himself—

“Well, I gotta work on my defense before I’m reliable enough to be the ace,” Aran says lightly. This level of trust can’t just be handed to him on a silver platter, after all. He’s got to earn it. “There’s a while to go.”

Kita shrugs. “You’ll get there,” he says with that same sharp confidence. “The end results of your actions will form soon enough.”

Aran hums. He looks at Kita, methodically folding a napkin together, and wonders if he’ll be enough for the new year. If they’ll be enough.

And then he resists the urge to snort, shaking his head. What’s he worrying for? Of course they’ll be enough.