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pearlsephoni · 1 year

Text

Stitched Together

Can also be read on AO3!

Rating: T

Fandom: Haikyuu!!

Pairing: Asanoya (Asahi/Nishinoya)

Characters: Asahi Azumane, Yu Nishinoya, Original dæmon characters

Word Count: 3,355

Summary: A late night misunderstanding becomes a chance at something sweet for tailor Asahi Azumane.

A/N: Originally written for @asanoyahqzine! Thank you so much to the mods for organizing this zine, it was a wonderful time! Further author’s notes can be read on AO3.

Asahi Azumane was just a normal tailor. He worked his normal job in his smaller-than-normal shop, and stayed up late to work towards his bigger-than-normal dream of one day designing his own clothing instead of mending others’.

He was just…a normal, completely unremarkable person, with a normal, completely unremarkable hare dæmon. He deserved to have a normal night after his normal day. And bursting out of his store with a cardboard tube as a weapon against a possible intruder was not what Asahi would consider a normal night.

“Holy shit— wait, wait!”

The panic pumping through Asahi made him process what he was seeing a little slower than usual: a young man with brown hair and a shock of blonde at the front was sprawled on the ground, brown eyes wide as he held a placating hand up. His other hand held some sort of scraper, with bits of paper stuck to the edge, paper that matched perfectly with the poster that had been pasted to the brick of Asahi’s shop. And next to the stranger was his dæmon, a red fox that was crouched and ready to attack with bared teeth. Asahi wasn’t sure how Miyu wasn’t quailing under the fox’s fierce eyes—his little soul was sitting straight and tall at his feet, the closest thing to threatening that a wild hare could be.

“What…?” Asahi began, eyes flickering from the stranger to his dæmon to the partially-scraped off poster on the wall. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m trying to help,” the stranger scoffed, carefully pushing himself back into a normal seated position. “Unless you want competing stores to advertise on your shop?”

“Competing—?” Asahi squinted at the poster, and immediately felt his neck warm with annoyance. “Quick Stitch Fix!” the poster cheerfully advertised, “Buy and tailor your clothes in one easy stop!” The local department store had just opened a tailoring service three weeks ago, and Asahi was already starting to feel the effect of their large-scale, big-budget services on his little shop.

“Yeah,” the stranger agreed, pulling Asahi’s attention back to him. “Figured you didn’t want any customers to immediately see alternatives when they come here.”

“Well…I don’t.” Asahi frowned at the poster for an extra beat before turning his frown onto the stranger. “Wait, who are you? Why are you here so late? And why were you trying to remove it?” Why do you care?

“One at a time, man,” the stranger laughed. “My name’s Yu Nishinoya, today was a late day at work, and I was trying to remove it because…well, I just told you. Competition, advertising, all that. I also just…don’t like those guys. They keep trying to push the little guys out of business.” His dæmon was still watching Asahi with her fur on end, until Nishinoya laid a gentle hand on her back. Only then did she deflate, her tail still twitching against the ground.

“Nishinoya,” Asahi echoed with a nod. “Well…thank you, Nishinoya-san. Though maybe next time you could just…let me know. Instead of giving me a late-night heart attack.”

Nishinoya’s eyes watched him for a beat, his lips finally stretching into a smile when Asahi let a grin curve over his face. “Just Nishinoya’s fine, or hell, just Noya. Sorry about the scare, uh…”

“Oh! Asahi. Azumane. Um…you can just. Call me Asahi.” Something about that smile frazzled something in Asahi’s brain and suddenly made him incapable of normal…non-garbled human speech. Thankfully Miyu didn’t seem to be too badly affected—his soul was carefully hopping towards the fox dæmon, her nose twitching as she held herself close to the ground in a perfect picture of docility. With each hop she took, the fox slowly relaxed, until she was willing to touch noses with Miyu and murmur a few words.

“Asahi-san,” Nishinoya hummed. “I like that!”

“Ah. Thank you.”

“Well, Asahi-san, it’s been a pleasure.” Nishinoya pushed himself to his feet, only to freeze when he noticed the part of the poster that still clung to the wall. “Oh, uh…I should finish that.”

For the first time that night, Asahi felt a soft laugh bubble out of him. “Here, let me help.”

——————————————————————————————————

That was supposed to be it. Asahi really thought that would be it. He thought that Nishinoya would just go down in his memory as an odd but kind stranger who just so happened to drift through his life.

Instead, a week after they had worked together to take down the flier, Asahi looked up at the jingle of the entrance’s bell, ready to greet the new customer, who just so happened to be—

“Nishinoya?”

“Hey, Asahi-san!” His smile was wide and bright, like he was genuinely thrilled to see the random tailor he’d helped. He made an interesting contrast to his dæmon—Asahi remembered Miyu saying her name was Haru—hovering behind his leg. “How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been alright. Managing to stay afloat despite the new competition.” A shadow passed over Nishinoya’s face, and Asahi tried offering a sheepish grin to reassure him. “How can I help you today?”

“Oh, I’ve got these pants that I have to wear for work, and they’ve always been a little long for me.” Nishinoya brandished the pants, which were made of a pretty evergreen velvet with gold stitching down the sides. “But I can’t wear the next size down, because then they’re too tight. I’ve never been to a tailor to get them fixed, but then I met you and figured why not, you know?”

Asahi couldn’t stop staring at the pants, only distantly hearing what Nishinoya was saying. “Aren’t those part of the uniform at the Inazuma hotel?” he blurted as soon as Nishinoya finished talking.

His customer blinked. “Uh…yeah, they are. You recognize them?”

“You work there?!”

“Yeah! What, you thought I stole these?”

“I would.” Asahi didn’t realize what he’d said until he saw Nishinoya’s brows shoot up his forehead. “I mean! Not that I actually would, I just—”

His words were suddenly drowned out by Nishinoya’s laughter, and he fell silent as he watched him crack up, struck dumb by the bright notes and the way his head tilted back with the force of his own laughter. “Sorry, wow, that was funny,” Nishinoya finally choked out, wiping at his eyes.

Asahi’s cheeks felt like they could catch on fire, even as they were pushed up by his wide smile. “Um…let’s get those fitted.”

Usually Asahi dreaded this part, awkwardly making conversation with his customer as he hovered around their body and pinned their clothes for his future reference. The only reason they stayed somewhat relaxed was because of Miyu’s far greater success at making friendly conversation with the customer’s dæmon.

The opposite happened with Nishinoya. Asahi couldn’t remember the last time conversation flowed so easily, filled with laughter and warm cheeks and glinting eyes. Meanwhile, Miyu seemed to need a little extra time to get Haru to relax enough to really engage with her.

If it had been Miyu who was so nervous in a new place, Asahi simply would’ve stopped going. The same clearly wasn’t true for Nishinoya. Asahi was prepared, if a little saddened, to never see the spunky bellboy again after he handed off his newly-tailored pants.

But instead, Nishinoya just…kept coming. At least twice a month, if not more, he would pop in with another set of pants that needed to be hemmed, or, occasionally, a jacket with sleeves that needed to be loosened around his surprising muscles. If he was the only customer in the store, he would always linger after Asahi finished the initial fitting, hovering by the front counter and peering at Asahi as he started sewing at his work table that was just visible from the front of the store. By the second month, Asahi just invited him behind the counter, and soon Miyu wasn’t his only work companion.

“I don’t get it,” Asahi laughed as he worked on the fourth pair of pants Nishinoya had brought in, “how are all of your pants too long for you?”

“I guess these clothing companies never thought someone my height would have legs like these.” Nishinoya reclined in his chair and crossed his legs with a dramatic, goofy preen. Asahi’s laughter got stuck in his throat at the sight of those thighs straining just a bit in those pants. Nishinoya may have been kidding around, but he really did have nice legs. The observation made Asahi’s stomach drop just a bit.

“Y-yeah. Guess so.” His eyes drifted up, and he was horrified to be met with a wide, knowing smile. “Um!” he nearly squeaked, “So! You don’t have that problem with your shirts?”

“Nah, just my jackets sometimes.”

“Ah. Well, if you ever need any of them to be altered—”

“—then I’ll be happy for the excuse to come see you again!”

Nishinoya’s smile somehow grew even wider as Asahi’s cheeks somehow grew even warmer. There was a soft laugh badly disguised as a huff from his work table, and he blindly reached out to give a small tug at Miyu’s ear. Satisfaction smoothed away his embarrassment when he heard a soft squeak in response. “...I’ll be happy, too,” he answered in a steady tone that couldn’t quite conceal how terribly bashful he felt.

Asahi liked to think he knew colors well. It was a basic part of his work as both a tailor and a designer. But in all his years of working with clothes, he didn’t think he’d ever seen a color as pretty as the dusting of pink across Nishinoya’s cheeks.

Man. He had it bad.

——————————————————————————————————

“He likes you.”

The needle sank into Asahi’s thumb. “Ow, dammit— what?”

Miyu looked awfully pleased with herself, her ears up as straight as she sat. “You seem awfully surprised.”

“That’s not— Miyu, what do you mean?”

“I mean he likes you! As more than friends, in case you wanted to explain that away.”

“Miyu.”

“Asahi!”

He very carefully tied off his stitches, stuck his needle into his pincushion, and rewound his thread before staring down his dæmon. “Who told you this?”

“Are you really asking me that?”

“His dæmon doesn’t even like me!”

“Only because you introduced us to them with a baseball bat!”

“It was an empty fabric roll!”

“Same difference!” Miyu hopped towards him from her usual perch on his work table, dodging the sprawl of his tools with practiced ease. “She’s also nervous because, and I quote, ‘he hasn’t felt this way about someone in a long time.’”

Hope was an intoxicating feeling, one Asahi didn’t usually like to indulge. But it was hard to resist when it came thanks to something his own soul said. “Why did she…trust you with all this?”

“It’s a little difficult to hold a grudge when your other half is feeling smitten. I would know.” Her ears flicked at the warmth rising to Asahi’s cheeks. “Asahi,” she crooned, coming close enough to nudge her soft nose against his hand. “I have a good feeling about him. And Haru. And I think I’ve convinced her to have a good feeling about you.”

“But what if we’re wrong?” Asahi murmured, fiddling at his fingers. “I…I do like him. But I’d rather just leave things as is instead of scaring him off and…not having him in our life at all.”

“You met him because he was scraping off your competition’s flier in order to support the business. And he’s come at least twice a month since, all because of some pants that are suddenly all too long for him.” She nudged at his wrist, reminding him to stop twisting at his fingers. “That doesn’t seem like the sort of person who’d be scared off by one little confession.”

“...Miyu?”

“Asahi?”

“If you’re wrong about this, you lose table privileges for the next month. At least.”

Miyu let out a delighted giggle, craning her neck up to bump his chin. “I like those chances.”

——————————————————————————————————

When Nishinoya next came to pick up his pants, Asahi felt like he might vibrate out of his skin from sheer nerves. His late-night conversation with Miyu seemed to echo around his brain, and he ended up falling into autopilot, treating Nishinoya with the same polite friendliness that he showed to other customers as he double-checked the fit of his pants.

He only snapped back to himself when he finished ringing Nishinoya up and handed him his freshly-folded pants. Nishinoya took them with a small furrow between his brows, and somehow that was enough to make Asahi remember himself and soften his smile from customer service-politeness to quiet friendliness. “Here you go.”

Just like that, the furrow disappeared, wiped away by a smile that almost looked relieved to Asahi as he received his payment. “Thanks as always, Asahi-san! These fit like a dream now.”

God, would his stomach ever stop flipping at the sight of that smile? “It’s my pleasure as always, Noya.”

With a last smile, Nishinoya began making his way to the door. Asahi turned back to the table, ready to start on his next order…and instead caught sight of Miyu tensed in a crouch on the counter, ears flicking this way and that. He followed her eye line, and found Haru looking just as agitated, fur standing on end and tail snapping back and forth. “Miyu?”

“It’s supposed to be today! You said you’d say something today!”

“Didja say something, Asahi-san?”

Asahi snapped up straight, heart rate soaring. It wasn’t a taboo to acknowledge conversations between a person and their dæmon, certainly not on the level of touching someone else’s dæmon. But it was a bit unusual, if only because it shook the perception of privacy that everyone was owed with their soul.

Nishinoya was a trusting person—he wore his heart on his sleeve, open and honest in a way that was refreshing. For him to interrupt a conversation between him and Miyu…well, Asahi was beginning to suspect their dæmons weren’t the only ones who had expected a certain conversation to be had today.

“Yeah, I did. Say something. Um.” Oh god…how did people do this? He didn’t know how to ask someone out, especially someone he liked so much.

Something soft covered his hand where it rested on the counter. He looked over to see Miyu resting her head on his hand, gazing up at him with wide, dark eyes. He knew that look—she’d given it to him their entire lives, whenever he nearly backed out of something because of nerves. It worked now, as it always did. He moved his hand to stroke her back, and as it moved, he felt himself calm down. When he looked up at Nishinoya again, his voice was steadier, despite the way his heart squeezed at the fond understanding in those warm, brown eyes.

“Um…I just wanted to say thank you, for all of your support. The way you removed the fliers from the storefront would’ve already been more than enough, but then you continued to trust me with your clothes, and I just…I really appreciate it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do this nearly as well as you do.”

“Ah…thank you. I actually, uh…I was wondering if I could treat you to lunch or dinner sometime? To say thank you?”

Nishinoya was silent for a moment, his gaze thoughtful as it flickered over Asahi’s nervous features. “Yeah, I’d really like that,” he eventually answered. “Just wondering though…and whatever you say won’t change my answer…are you asking me on a date, Asahi-san?”

Oh, god. “Um! Well!” He felt Miyu’s soft nose nudge against his ankle. “Well…would you like it to be a date?”

“I asked first.”

God, he was stubborn. Asahi liked him so much. “Then…yeah. I’m asking you on a date. But…but it doesn’t have to be, if you don’t want it to be.” It was a battle to keep his voice from shaking, and his cheeks were only growing warmer, but they were also being pushed by a shy smile.

Nishinoya wasn’t helping his nerves, not when he was watching him with such quiet focus instead of his usual bright, welcoming energy. His dark eyes stayed steady on Asahi’s as he leaned on the counter and finally let a grin curve his lips. He was magnetic, making Asahi instinctively mirror Nishinoya’s posture on his side of the counter.

Then, and only then, did Nishinoya finally speak. “Yeah. I’d love to go on a date with you.”

“Oh.” Asahi hadn’t been expecting a rejection, necessarily, especially after everything he and Miyu had discussed. But the acceptance still made his stomach swoop with excitement, and he felt his smile broaden across his face. Something about that made Nishinoya bite his bottom lip, and the next thing Asahi knew, there were fingers curling into his collar and tugging him across the counter. “Wha—?”

His confusion died on his tongue when he felt soft lips pressing to his cheek. If he’d thought his cheeks were warm before, they were on fire now. He never really understood the phrase “starry-eyed,” but he could guess it was something like the way he felt watching Nishinoya pull away.

“I’m free Friday,” he was saying now, his bright voice cutting through Asahi’s daze. “If you wanted to get out of the store after closing, we could get dinner. There’s a really good curry place a few streets over, with a terrace that Haru likes.”

“You like it too, Yu.” Asahi felt something in the back of his neck twinge from how quickly he looked down, but it was secondary to the shock of hearing Haru speak out loud for the first time. The fox dæmon’s tail was curled around Nishinoya’s ankle, but her ears were perked up as she met Asahi’s gaze. “It’s all lit up with candles instead of the anbaric lamps. Very…atmospheric.” One of her ears twitched as she let out a soft huff that Asahi immediately recognized as a quiet laugh, and he felt his lips stretching into another smile, especially when Nishinoya muttered, “Real subtle, thanks.”

“I think we’re well past being subtle.”

“That sounds great,” Asahi said before Nishinoya could respond. Delight sparked through him when he saw the annoyance drain from Nishinoya’s face as his eyes jerked up to Asahi’s, glittering like the starriest sky with a smile to match.

“Oh! Wow. I mean, great! Great…wow.” Asahi had fallen for Nishinoya’s bright confidence and eager kindness, but he could just as easily fall for his shyness, too. The way he raked his fingers through his hair was all bashful fondness, and it made Asahi’s own fondness bubble through him like champagne. “I’ll come by around closing on Friday, then!”

“Oh, you can come 30 minutes later. I need time to ring up the cashier and clean up.”

“I can help. It’d be worth it for the extra time with you.”

“...Ah.” Well. There was that confidence, as magnetic and disarming as that smile. “Then…I’ll see you at closing.”

“Great! I’ll see you then, Asahi-san.”

The rest of the orders Asahi worked on seemed to pass in a blissful blur. And when he locked up the store that night, he was lost in daydreams of dark eyes, bright smiles, loud words, and soft lips…until he felt a gentle nip at his ankle. He yelped, just barely keeping his keys from leaping out of his hands before he frowned down at Miyu. “What was that for?”

“I told you so!”

He should’ve felt more annoyed at the clear smugness in Miyu’s quivering nose and perky ears, but all he could feel was excitement and grudging gratitude. “Yeah. You did.” He didn’t say anything else, but after he tucked away the keys, he knelt with open arms. Thank you.

Miyu didn’t hesitate to leap into them with a soft chirrup, and as he straightened up and began walking home, he could feel her nestle under his chin. You’re welcome. I’m proud of you.

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