A/N 13/08/2020:

Hey hey hey!
My apologies for posting this chapter a day late! I was quite sick yesterday (ask Possumel for testimony, lmao), and though I did feel a bit better in the evening, I decided it would be best just to post the chapter on Friday instead.

Chapter 3 might be my personal favourite of this story, and Tanaka's behaviour in this chapter is one of the things that make it most clear to others that I have ADHD. :p I personally use 'jumping up and down in a corner until I've calmed down' as my coping mechanism, but a strong hug (that forces be to stand still) from my boyfriend or sisters also does a lot.

As a last note; a dear 'thank you' to my boyfriend for forming a personal oasis of calm.

"I'm a sucker for all the subliminal things no one knows about you"

"Hisashi, have you seen Ryuu? I thought he wanted to eat with us again?"

"He's doing laps."

"Hmm?"

In answer, Kinoshita merely points at the nearest corner of the tennis field, only just visible through the window next to them. Ennoshita shuffles a little to the right for a better view. From his new position, he can recognize the guy who is running wide circles around the terrain. It's a common lunch break habit when Ryuu gets too excited and can't contain his energy any longer. The light rain doesn't seem to disturb him in the slightest. Chikara can't hold back the tiny groan that escapes him. 'Rain. Again?! What is with that guy?'

"I don't think going out to get him is a great idea," Narita says, smiling up at Ennoshita's profile as he keeps on staring outside of the window.

"I didn't say that I would," Chikara automatically replies.

"Mhm," his friend replies, trying not to grin too broadly at the defensive tone.

'Narita has always been kind like that.'

Kinoshita, not so much.

"Bitch, please?! You know it's too late to lie to us, right?" Kinoshita doesn't seem perturbed by Ennoshita's death glare at all. "Anyway," he continues, carefully avoiding to acknowledge Chikara's embarrassed glare, "Kazuhito is right. It won't do any good to drag him back inside if he's not done running yet. And he said he's 'having his energy spikes again', so I doubt that'll be anytime soon."

"Can you even imagine having so much energy that you need to run it off at random times? I'll never understand what it's like to have so much exuberance that you need to 'force yourself to sit quietly', I wish he would give some of that excess to me," Narita laughs.

"He can keep it, as far as I care," Hisashi says kind of testily. "Nothing against Ryuu, he's awesome and all. But I'd never want to be cursed with a well of energy like the one he has. It's useful during practice, of course, but everywhere else it gets annoying way too quickly. I don't think I could cope with all the complaints."

'And even during practice we'll complain when Tanaka gets too loud,' Chikara mentally adds. It often results in a scolding when Ryuu can't calm himself down. He shoots one last glance to the running figure, now passing the gate for the 3rd time. 'There has to be another way.'

"By the way – 5 out of 7 questions on Ito–sensei's test this morning were practical exercises on logarithms, so I'd check those again if I were you, Kinoshita" Chikara says, taking a seat next to Narita and taking out his bento and chopsticks.

"Dude, what the hell?! Why didn't you lead with that instead?"

Ennoshita has finished eating and is busy explaining as much as he can remember from the different questions of the test when Tanaka plops down on the chair in front of him. He's still panting slightly and almost throws himself on his lunch in his haste to eat. For a second, Chikara fears he'll just eat it plastic and all.

If the way the spiker's bouncing legs continuously bump against their knees disturbs any of his friends, they don't mention it.

Somewhere in the middle of their first year at Karasuno, Ennoshita had given up on watching new movies with Tanaka. The habit of their bi-weekly movie-nights had formed without either of them really noticing. A thing Ennoshita did notice, however, is the fact that Tanaka just can't seem to keep his mouth shut; no matter what it is they're watching. He soon gave up on asking Ryuu not to talk, since his friend honestly didn't seem to realize that he started talking at points he found exciting – making jokes and asking questions Ennoshita told him multiple times he couldn't answer, since neither of them had seen the film before.

They've held on to the tradition for over a year by now, and mostly watch older movies these days, or recent movies Chikara still managed to watch before the boy currently wiggling from side to side on the other end of the couch did. Looking back, it had been a great decision, since it made Ennoshita hold back from snapping at Tanaka whenever he started talking again and ruined the suspension.

Currently though, Chikara is having strong doubts whether Ryuu likes the movie at all, because his loudmouthed friend has been quiet for over 20 minutes. His conviction is strengthened by the consistent brushing of Tanaka's shoulder against his, whenever the wing spiker switches from rocking forwards and back to rocking sideways instead. Ryuu notices the fact that he's wiggling about every 5 minutes, forcing himself to sit still until he gets distracted again and falls right back into swaying.

It takes Chikara catching Tanaka when he starts clamping down on his knees, pushing them against the sofa in an effort to hold still, to decide that's he's had had enough. Ryuu blinks up at him when Ennoshita hits the pause button, his slow swaying stopped by the abrupt silence.

"You sure you want to continue?"

"What?"

"It's clear you aren't all that interested. We don't have to watch it, you know? I don't mind."

Ryuu quickly shakes his head, hands clenching as he starts pressing down on his thighs again. "No, no! You talked a lot about this one, I want to see it!" Strong fingers flex, and Ennoshita can almost see the currents of energy vibrating under the wing spiker's skin. He pouts a little as he stares at his friend, considering.

"Do you want to watch it the next time instead? You've been… moving a lot."

It's a sign of how well Tanaka knows him that he doesn't apologize like he always used to at the start of their friendship. "Oh. Didn't realize. I guess we've been sitting for a while now, maybe?" Grey eyes flit to the window before looking back at Ennoshita. Chikara forces himself to hold back his smile. He'll never understand why most people find Ryuu as intimidating as they do, how they find him unpredictable – he's so easy to read.

"Do you want to go out for a while? Let out some pent-up energy or something?"

"You… don't live that far off from the park, right?"

"Euh… You mean the Kasukawa one?"

"Yeah, with the ducks!"

This time, Ennoshita fails to hold back his snort. "The ducks?"

"I like birds," Tanaka shrugs. "So are we going?"

It's… unfairly cute – the way Tanaka seems so taken with nature. He appears to brighten and calm down at the same time. The constant small wiggles have stopped entirely. Ennoshita doubts he's ever seen him this blissed-out before. Even when they won some past matches, it hadn't been like this. He'd been happy then too, the both of them shouting until they were hoarse, but this…

He stares unashamedly at Ryuu, who doesn't notice him anyway. In all honesty – it's like he's forgotten the other boy is here at all. He's still standing upright – a direct reversal of the way Ennoshita's sweaty form lays sprawled out on the grassy slope.

Ryuu's heaving chest is the only visible proof of his and Chikara's competition to sprint here as fast as possible. Apart from his fast breathing, his stance is utterly relaxed; eyelids closed as his smiling face is tilted backwards – taking in large gulps of fresh air as the golden sunlight filters through the leaves above, painting pretty patterns on his face. He's radiating such a strong feeling of contentment that Chikara swears he can almost feel it.

It takes a while for Tanaka to move. And even when he does, he stays standing for a while longer – just staring at the nature surrounding them before strong arms stretch up to softly caress the rustling leaves that are dangling and dancing in the breeze, his smile broadening as a thin branch accidentally slaps him in the face.

He is rubbing his cheek as he squats down to come sit next to Chikara, who smiles at him languidly – tired from their earlier run and the warm sunlight he's been bathing in for the past 20 minutes. It takes a lot of effort to pat the grass next to him in invitation. He ignores Tanaka's snigger at the way his molten arms don't seem to move in the quick effortless way they're supposed to.

There's something to say for relaxing in nature, or at least, there is when the weather is nice out. He feels like the main character out of one of his old timey movies – with the way the soft wind caresses his face and tousles his hair, cicadas buzzing in the background.

A couple of questions are slowly bubbling up inside his brain, but he waits patiently until Ryuunosuke lays stretched out next to him before letting out a little hum to catch his attention. Tanaka turns his face expectantly, curious as to whatever Ennoshita wants to share, the latter of whom forgets everything he was planning to say – distracted by the way the sunlight seems to turn his friend's eyes into silvery pools of molten steel.

Eventually, the words that escape his lips don't really form a question at all. "I didn't know you responded so much, to… y'know", he vaguely waves his hand, "all this."

Ryuu lets out a soft laugh, patting the pocket of his shorts to fish out a pair of sunglasses and sadly hiding those pretty eyes from view. "It has always helped a lot, ever since I was small. It helps me calm down when I'm… When I get too excited. I don't know why I respond that heavily to it, exactly, but I don't really care as long as it works."

"I really like nature," he adds, a little redundantly.

Ryuu closes his eyes as he continues to talk – that ever-blissful expression still present in his features as he starts to weave his fingers in between the blades of grass, slowly pulling his hand up into the air until they slip from between his fingers, only to start the process anew straight after.

"I don't only like nature when it's sunny, like today, though. I actually like rain a lot, and thunderstorms. Oh, and I like walking on crunchy leaves. But it does kinda suck when it turns out that there was a puddle beneath them – I hate being forced to walk around with wet socks." Ennoshita snorts as he starts to play with the grass blades too, happy to just listen to Tanaka talk. It's a lot easier to stare fondly at someone when their eyes are closed. "I guess I love every season just as much as the others. I've never quite understood how people can choose one of them over the others; they're just too different."

Now here Chikara decides to speak up, uninterested in starting a discussion with Ryuu about 'the merits of too hot summer storms versus catching frostbite in winter'.

He knows Tanaka used to have a lot of arguments with people when he got 'too wild', though a lot of their reactions changed when they met Saeko as well. "So… Why don't you come here more often, then? When you get-… When you want to?"

Ryuu clicks his tongue but doesn't mention Chikara's slip up. "It's not an addiction or something like that, you know? It's not the only thing that calms me down. People can work just as well."

"Really?"

Tanaka's eyelids twitch heavily at the blatant curiosity in Ennoshita's voice, like he has to restrain himself not to open them, but he relaxes again when Chikara fails to ask further questions.

Chikara's curious smirk turns to a smile as they lay there, basking in the heat and breathing in the smell of grass. In a flash of realization, he thinks of Hinata, and the way everyone has taken to comparing him to the sun. He won't say they're wrong, per se, but he does feel like everyone keeps overlooking Ryuu during those conversations. No one who would see him like this, today, would be able to say that he's anything short of radiant. Where Hinata is a blazing burst of light; almost too bright to look at, Tanaka is a steady but strong glow from within, its intensity warming everyone and anything in his vicinity. A shiny dome of positive energy, providing you with support when your own enthusiasm fades away, lending you warmth at the times where your inner strength seems to cool down.

He's shaken from his reverie when Tanaka picks up his story again.

"Anyway, it's not like I can just run off whenever things become 'too much'. And people would look at me weird if I walk to the school gates every break-time, just to stare at the trees. I'd stand out even more. I mean, not that I really mind it most of the time, but I'd rather not have it that way. They think I'm weird enough already. Annoying." His voice goes slightly stilted at that last bit, but Ennoshita has no clue what he's talking about. 'Who out of our classmates even cares about shit like that? And if they do care, doesn't that just prove that they're shitheads who are unworthy of your attention?'

"Ah, yes – you're super weird. So annoying," he drawls, grinning, only to quickly scramble for words when he catches Tanaka's grimace from the corner of his eye. In the end he decides to elbow Ryuu lightly in the side. He knows that what he's going to say next might reveal a little too much, but honesty is all he has to fight the insecurity hidden behind that lingering frown. Regardless of future awkwardness or other consequences, Ennoshita is ready to pay any price to burn those stupid ideas from Ryuunosuke's mind. He's been a coward before, but not about something like this. Not when it counts the most.

He clears his throat before saying "You're right when you say that your energy can be… a lot. But it's refreshing at the same time, it really is. I don't think anyone on the team dislikes it. Not even Tsukishima, even though he insists on acting like he does. They all pull energy from it, from the way you're… you, on the court."

"As for me… I think it's…" He gulps, accidentally pulling out some of the grass blades he was trailing his fingers through in his sudden burst of nerves, "-endearing."

"I honestly don't mind, when you're… I don't know… Anything, really. When you break my pen because you keep fidgeting with it, or when you wiggle when we watch movies, or when you're being dumb with Noya, or-" He interrupts himself, sternly staring up at some shaking leaves and saying: "-well unless you two are botching your homework of course, with that last one, but other than that… I don't mind when you shout, or sing or-" 'take your shirt off way too often', his mind adds unhelpfully. "Well. You get what I mean."

He glances to his right, heart beating fast in his chest, and praying that the casualness of his tone didn't sound as false as he feared. Not that him hiding his 'more sappy thoughts' made his statements untrue, per se, but he'd rather not confess out of the blue like this. Maybe not ever, actually. It's a thing he's still debating on, and it's not important at the moment, not when he should be concentrating on Tanaka's weird feelings of guilt, just for him being himself.

Tanaka doesn't reply, simply pulling down his sunglasses in an effort to add some dramatic swagger to his heavily doubtful stare. It's more than enough to make a grown man doubt himself, let alone a 17 year old infatuated high school student.

"What? Why are you looking like that? I told you what I think, right? You just want compliments or what?"

His comment only results in Ryuu lifting both of his eyebrows, incredulous.

"Stop!" Chikara hisses, awkwardness creeping warm and red from where it's buried in his heart up to his neck and resting visibly in the tip of his nose and cheekbones. "Stop looking at me like that. I like it, okay? I'm almost never actually annoyed when you start yelling, it's mostly acting. Because I think it's- It's just not annoying, simple as that! Don't act like you don't know."

Tanaka stares hard at Ennoshita, his expression utterly blank. He usually isn't this hard to read, and it's giving Chikara heart palpitations, so he wished he'd stop.

Right as the heart palpitations make way for an even stronger wave of anxiety, Ryuu opens his mouth and with a complete poker face says: "I knew you'd learn to love my singing in the end, Chika!"

"You little-! That's what you got from all of this?!"

Tanaka crows out his victory at Ennoshita's exaggerated annoyance, not daunted in the slightest by the way Ennoshita bumps their shoulders together hard in a pitiful act of revenge. Chikara loses his composure a couple of seconds later; a grin breaking through his fake frown at the sound of Tanaka's contagious peals of laughter.

And if they stay there for hours, just talking and laying like that; bodies touching from their shoulders all the way down to their pinkie fingers, enjoying the sun – well, that's no one's business but their own, isn't it?

A/N: An other day, an other chapter posted! ^^
I really hope you liked this one! :)

Some thoughts:
1. Okay, maybe 'theoretically' you shouldn't share answers of (math) tests with your friends before they take said test. But let's be honest; it's just a thing (most) teenagers do, so I decided to include it anyway.

2. Tanaka's wiggling during the movie is a direct copy of my own actions. I often sit wiggling while I'm working (which my coworkers find very funny) or I'm bouncing back and forth in some other way.
In highschool, I once looked up in the middle of a written test German, only to see my teacher have a full giggle fit in silence - staring straight at my face. (She's amazing, I wasn't offended at all, it seemed like she was mostly endeared). Apparently, I had been wiggling (while making my test) so enthusiastically that it almost looked like I was dancing on my chair. This could have been extremely embarrassing, seeing that I didn't realize I was doing it before I chose to look up at the teacher, but since she didn't seem to mind, I just kept going while finishing my work.
Like Tanaka clamping down on his thighs - I can control this if I /really/ want to, just like I can force myself not to talk during movies if I /really/ try. The thing is that I just don't fully realize that I'm doing it, which means that I would have to remain actively aware of what I'm doing the full length of the movie, which not only is mentally exhausting, but demands a LOT of my attention - and often makes it so that I can't fully enjoy the movie. Luckily I have amazing friends, and most of them understand (even though many of them choose not to sit next to me in the movie theatre :p).

I hope you all have a great weekend ahead of you!