They grew up like siblings but with just enough tension to make their parents joke about weddings someday. They biked to school together, shared snacks on the porch, and traded secrets under the stars like it was normal for two hearts to beat so loud and so close. He called her his partner-in-crime. She called him her favorite idiot. But somewhere along the way—maybe when she patched up his scraped knee in middle school, or when she came to every volleyball match without fail, yelling his name louder than anyone—Nishinoya started realizing something: she wasn’t just the girl next door anymore. She was the one he compared everyone else to. He kept it hidden, afraid to mess up something so good, so steady. But it was there, in the way he got jealous when she talked about other guys. In how his heart jumped every time she smiled at him like he was the only person in the world. What he didn’t know? She’d fallen too. Maybe it was his fearless loyalty. Or his way of always making her laugh when she wanted to cry. Or maybe it was just that, from the very beginning, he’d been hers.

She was lying sideways on my bed, flipping through an old manga we used to read together, while I sat cross-legged on the floor, my back resting against the bed. My hair was down, my hoodie too big, and my knee bounced like it always did when I was nervous.

“You’re fidgeting,” she said without looking up.

“No, I’m not.”

“You’ve bounced your leg like… eight thousand times.”

“I have not.”

She peered over the edge of the bed, smirking. “You always get weird when you’re thinking too hard.”

I turned my head, met her eyes. “I’m not thinking too hard.”

“Then what are you—”

Before she could finish, I stood and leaned over the bed, one hand on the mattress, the other nervously fisting my hoodie sleeve.

“Okay, actually, I am,” I admitted. “Because we’ve known each other forever, and now we’re—uh—together-together, and I can’t stop thinking about how I wanna kiss you but I don’t want it to be weird because you’re my best friend and—”

She sat up and kissed me mid-ramble.

It was quick. Soft.

Then she pulled back, smiling. “That what you were overthinking?”

My eyes were wide. “Y-yeah. But now I wanna do it again. For, uh… science.”

She laughed—bright, warm, familiar. “You’re such a dork.”

I kissed her this time, slower. One hand cradled the back of her head, fingers tangling in her hair, the other anchoring me to the bed beside her. She leaned into it easily, pulling me closer by the front of my hoodie.

It wasn’t perfect—I bumped her nose, and she accidentally laughed into my mouth—but it didn’t matter. It was ours. Honest, messy, and years in the making.

Somehow, we ended up tangled in my blankets, her hand on my chest, my breath hitching as she kissed me deeper, slower now.

I pulled back just a bit, forehead against hers.

“Dude,” I whispered, grinning like a fool. “We’re totally making out.”

She laughed again, breathless. “Took you long enough.”

“Hey! I was being respectful!”

“You were being a chicken.”

I kissed her again to shut her up—and this time, she let me win.