Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Man’s ability to adapt is his greatest asset. Here’s your proof.

Week one in Brazil is a tornado. Shouyou isn’t exactly a stranger to a looming wall; he is, still, unfamiliar with paperwork, legal arrangements, and bureaucratic confusions. He’s left Japan with a visa for two years, six months; Lucio Kato asked him where all his belongings where, at the airport, and Shouyou replied everything he needed was in his suitcase. It wasn’t, but that’s going to have to be okay, now.

The old saying goes, you miss even the prisons of your motherland, and that’s a fitting thought. He’s come to Rio to sprout wings, but the old cage remains a precious comfort. A detached one, 18,555 kilometers and twelve time zones away. Good thing it is.

The first thing he learned about Brazil: the heat is everywhere, on the sand, in the air, an essential component of blood and the human psyche. Those first weeks, he spends entirely in its clutches, without a job or a volleyball, trying and failing to shake it off.

On the beach, his feet drag behind him. Jump, is the natural prey's instinct. Jump, you know how to jump. The ground has other ideas. Why would you want to fly, when you could melt into the sand? Disappear?

It’s a battle of wills. Shouyou is used to these, too. He’s just realizing it’s much easier to withstand collision when there’s concrete below his feet, and a cool breeze above.

He comes home. His roommate hates him. That’s one of the things that have to be fine with him, now, because what else could it be? He can’t go crawl in next to Natsu, or phone up Yamaguchi for his extra futon. So, it’s just alright.

He does phone Kageyama, in the middle of the night. On the other side of the world, it is morning for him. Two years ago, they’d wake to the same day; now, Kageyama wakes in Tokyo for a morning run, when Shouyou has just finished his most recent battle with the evening heat in his shower.

“So,” he sounds on the phone, “How is volleyball?”

“Great.” Is the answer, provided eyes closed and coy, “Of course.”

“Good.”

A million other things, maybe. Shouyou asks questions, and Kageyama answers methodically. Shouyou isn’t offended that he doesn’t ask anything back, because there isn’t much to say, anyway, and that’s another thing that has to be okay.

Then: rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Jump, his brain to his legs, in search of flight. No, the sand to him, not until you learn how to stand. Fair enough.

::

At age twenty, he would have thought he’d be all set. Fifteen and freshly out of middle school, twenty was forever away. Now, finally twenty and blowing out a lone candle on a muffin, he’s forever away from home, alone, gradually giving way to sunlight in his veins, and forgetting everything he once was. Sand is ground zero, or maybe minus one.

He sees the books on a shopfront when he’s ambling though the city, on his incessant mission to blend into it. Mastery, they read, of everything Shouyou thinks he should be, other than happy, but he’s sure that last one will be the ball to drop at the end. With a roommate that hates him, a few hundred reals to his name, a home 18,555 kilometers away, it is an obnoxious purchase. Shouyou is nothing if not obnoxious.

What am I mastering?

Yourself.

Don’t I already have myself?

Clearly not. That’s true.

Fear comes to him in the darkest corner of his room, always, the farthest one from the sun. He crouches, and he reads, and he beholds the naked pieces of the whole that he is.

Next day: rinse, repeat.

This time, run, his brain to his legs. The sand flies up in an answered question. Shouyou runs, first on the wet firmness of the ocean skirt, then on the scalding heaps that form into craters under the striking of his feet, towards a vision that hasn’t quite materialized.

::

One time, in the shade of the spring sun, a whole team had to come together to teach Shouyou out of a shadow. He felt weights tied to his ankles, handcuffs against his wrists; it wasn’t like the curious siphon of the sand, but it was absolute, and it came from a bleeding wound screaming within him.

A whole team had to come together, take his shackles off one by one. An arm lifted off the ground, and then some breath let in; with that came sight rushing in, and then feeling in his heart, and just enough soul ready to just run. Then his shadow had a shape, and then a face, and Shouyou loved his name, loved it rolling off his tongue like it was pulling apart one syllable at a time.

Now, early mornings, he sits and thinks of this. Then he ties his weights to his ankles, back where they belong, on his run through the sand, on his road to the jump. No, the sand said to him once, not until you learn to stand, and Shouyou yielded. If you’re not comfortable walking trapped in your body, you will burn out on the way to the sky.

::

At some point, things settle. His job, first; then, his volleyball, cutting through the air, then the shape of his jaw, and finally his feet in the sand. Logically, this is a slow process, but time has blended into its many fractions in Rio, and so Shouyou only thinks it was somewhere between his roommate not hating him and his joining the beach league.

First, he runs. Every seashell on the beach kisses his feet, until they come to know him by that familiar scorch. Then, they launch into a fast-paced love affair; the sand with him, he with the sky, and that’s all that’s needed to make the world snap into place. Between the bulks of boiled chicken over rice, the nights spent learning life in cocktail bars and strangers’ beds, there’s the afternoons with the junior team, with hard parquet under his feet and a taller net waiting ahead. It reminds him of Miyagi, when he closes his eyes and lets his shadow feel like a person next to him.

“I’m coming to Rio,” Kageyama says on the phone, “For the Olympics.”

And Shouyou knew he would, really, but it does leave the aftertaste of black coffee everywhere in his soul, and that’s that.

He congratulates Kageyama, with genuine happiness, before he adds, “You should focus on training.”

What he really means: leave me boiling in the sand, and I’ll watch you rise above the stars, but please let our worlds not collide.

::

Buddhism teaches the desertion of anything that can cause pain, Shouyou’s book says about mastering love. That sounds about right.

He hangs on to his volleyball, because its absence causes more pain than its presence. Eventually, through one meditation sitting in the morning and the other phone call missed at night, a million other facts about the anatomy of sand that we will visit later, he is forged into something new.

Heitor comes to him, seeking that something new. He’s everything Shouyou isn’t; he’s tall, his biggest problem is that he wants a dog, and he’s been chosen by volleyball. Shouyou, on the road to build something worthy of this same choosing, is slightly mesmerized.

They’re fast friends, after they’re partners that first time. What else can you be, if you’ve trusted each other once with half a court and every point on it? They watch the Superliga together, and then the World Club Championships, and then the World League in Nice’s apartment, because her TV is higher resolution.

“Is that him?” Heitor asks, pointing at number twenty, “Your friend.”

“Yes.”

When was the last time I saw his face? Shouyou muses, in that way children do when they play pretend, knowing full well the altered voices and funny faces don’t make for different people. Maybe 18,555 kilometers and twelve time zones do, if you keep at it long enough.   

::

Orthopedic injuries have a strange way to them. They never really heal; they hurt still, every now and then, when it’s cold out or about to rain or you have a fever, and your body reminds you of all its broken bits. Shouyou feels a little like that when Yamaguchi picks him up at the airport. 

“I thought Kageyama would be here,” Yamaguchi points out, after a heartfelt hug and a near spillage of tears. “Are you guys okay?”

And see, it’s not “is he okay.” It’s “you guys,” because such is the pre-proven axiom that they all think and abide by: even if something were wrong with Kageyama, he should – and would— logically be here. Which is bizarre, to say the least, and misguided, because nothing has ever been wrong with Kageyama. On the contrary, everything has always been perfectly right with him, and still this supposition has emerged somehow to cling eternally to Shouyou’s collar.

“We’re fine,” he says, and it’s true, because everything has been perfectly right with them, too.

::

The last time he saw Kageyama, they were in Rio. Shouyou had watched the Olympics. Kageyama knew he’d watched. Neither of them had brought up a possible meeting.

Shouyou’s phone was ringing. He registered this only passingly, because he was drunk. His eyes located his alarm clock first. Shit, he thought, I must have missed the awarding ceremony. Then, clumsily, he reached for his phone. Kageyama. His hands were sweaty.

“Yes?” He whispered into the phone. He tried to get out of bed. He failed.

“Where are you?”

“I’m home.”

“You sound weird.”

“You sound weird.” Then, silence. Shouyou still heard the clamoring in the background. He dimly wondered where Kageyama was.

“I want to see you.” Something collided with heavy air in Shouyou’s mind. “How can I see you?”

“When?” He coughed. He was spinning into the ground.

“I only have tonight.” Kageyama huffed. Shouyou knew that huff. He made that when he was carrying heavy things, or when he was cleaving his way through pedestrians, or both.

“Okay.” He sucked a breath in. “Okay.”

He clicked off, somehow, with hands made of lead and eyes imagining fairy dust. He sent Kageyama his location. He hid the bottle of tequila under his bed and went to check on Pedro. Pedro wasn’t in. Why would Pedro be in on a Saturday? He splashed water onto his face, over his hair, over his forearms. He tried to pull himself together, but he couldn’t tell if he managed. The doorbell rang.

(It is a little odd how the mind works. Even as Shouyou knew who was at the door, even as his heartbeat flew off into the sky, he still looked through the peep hole. He still called out a small, meek, “Pedro?” It wasn’t Pedro.

“It’s me,” Kageyama whispered. And Shouyou knew him by his voice.)

::

The last time he saw Kageyama, it all happened in slow motion, almost. Shouyou opened the door. Kageyama walked in. He was still wearing his Japan jersey jacket, which was an awful idea, because he was sweating profusely. He had a tiny, red suitcase trailing behind him. Shouyou thought it was odd that he could fit his whole life inside it, before he remembered he’d done the same just a few months ago. He didn’t know what to say, so he apologized for the state of the house.

“You smell like alcohol.” Kageyama pointed out when he set his suitcase opposite the bedroom door.

“Want some?” Shouyou offered, in a half-hearted attempt at deflection. He hadn’t expected Kageyama to say yes. He searched under the bed for the tequila bottle he’d attempted to hide away, and suddenly he felt incredibly stupid. He could feel Kageyama’s grin on his neck.

When he turned up with the bottle, he looked at Kageyama. Really looked, with interest, with eyes sharper than intoxication should allow. He waited for the magic to hit, and when it didn’t, he was only disappointed at his own disappointment, and he went to the kitchen to get shot glasses and lemon.

“What to?” He asked Kageyama, before they toasted.

“Volleyball,” was the instant reply. He heard the clink of the glasses, and the salt stung his tongue.

When Natsu was very young, just old enough to run around and adorably mispronounce words, Shouyou taught her how to play hide and seek.

It was originally his thing, hide and seek; his father had taught him, before he’d left. Now with mom always busy, he could only play it by himself (which he did, thank you, through sheer imagination and boredom) but he was also a good brother, so he taught Natsu.

Natsu was small, only slightly larger than the woodland animals in their backyard. It was there that Shouyou taught her how to hide; behind trees, under the stairs, in the bushes, anywhere spacious enough to hide her, which was most places, and Natsu would craftily stuff herself into oblivion. Shouyou had to be craftier, because he was bigger. On a cold winter day, when it was Natsu’s turn to count to a hundred, he hid in their garden shed. It was a hard squeeze with the tools, the excess soil in a bag and the pots waiting for the spring. He crouched down and waited for Natsu to find him. Waited.

Natsu didn’t come. Shouyou thought this was prime opportunity to shoot out of the shed, blindside Natsu while she toddled around the farther sides of the garden. He pushed the shed door with little force, so as to avoid the incriminating creak. It didn’t open. He pushed harder, but it didn’t open, and then he realized the latch must have fallen into its place when he was weaseling in.

It ended up taking three hours. Then mom came home, in barely subdued horror, and clawed the shed door open. By now, Shouyou was cold enough that his limbs were numb. Mom clutched him to her chest and cried. Maybe she was just as scared.

“Shouyou,” she heaved a deep sigh, “Shouyou, I was so worried. How did you get in there?”

He wondered this, too. He looked behind him, at the tiny shed that looked just big enough to host three rabbits.

“Was I really in there?” He wheezed, a cough threatening its way out. To him, it looked smaller than Natsu. To himself, Shouyou looked like a giant.

And maybe it was the shock of the hour, of the half-frozen son, or the relief that he wasn't fully so, but his mother held him tighter. “Shouyou, baby,” she kissed the top of his head, “Don’t you see? You’re so small.”

It was some kind of plea, Shouyou knows now, to mind the fact that he was a child, to mind the fact that he wasn't powerful enough to blast open a shed door, that mom was never home and dad was gone and Natsu was too young. But it was a death sentence, all the same.

::

At fifteen, Kageyama Tobio was too young to ponder the collisions that build up and change the course of one's life. Here is an example.

“I know what you were thinking,” he said to Hinata, after he got smacked in the face with a spike from Asahi, “You were wishing you were as tall and strong as Azumane-san, so you could be an ace too.”

This is the first time Tobio knows he is right, simply because Hinata does. This is a private line that will haunt them for a lifetime.

“So I got a little jealous, so what?”

So, everything, to Tobio. All he sees is Hinata, all he wants is to hear that clash of the ball against Hinata’s hand. So, what? What more? He sets the ball for Hinata, that rally, and he makes a point of declaring it to everyone, as if that'll make them understand. It doesn't.

“You suck,” he tells him, right after, “You’re a scrub. You’ll never be an ace. But, as long as you're with me, you're the greatest.”

When Hinata scores that point, with a whole team of experienced players against him, it probably means something. Tobio doesn’t realize that, back then. Now, he does.

You're all I see, he wants to say. I don’t know why, because you suck, you’re bad at everything, but you’re all I see, and I think there must be a reason for that, but. I don't know what.

“We’re ready to play!” They scream instead, simultaneously, and that’s that.

It is, if nothing else, a start.

::

The thing about being small is: it becomes very difficult to be seen. More so, to feel it.

To himself, Shouyou feels like a giant stomping his way through life. His steps have weight. He imagines they must echo into some greater chamber of the world, probably, with godly force.

This is not a sentiment other people seem to share. It starts with the shed. Then it’s the size of his clothes, the mismatch with his age and the age for which their tags proclaim intent. Before he knows it, the net is looming over him. It’s all the middle blockers that stare at Kageyama after he’s just done a quick, wondering how and when it happened; all the gazes that slowly scan the court, angle down, only then find him, and arrive unanimously to one resounding conclusion: he’s so small, I couldn’t see him.

When Volleyball Monthly did that interview with him, after the close of his second season in Brazil, the title was “conquering height?” It was up to the reader to discern whose height this was, exactly. Shouyou’s? His opponent’s?

But Shouyou hasn't conquered height. Emerging out of the shed, he’d looked back at it like he was dreaming, and wondered, and marveled, how did I fit in there? Often, he ponders this in myriads of questions. How does he fit into his own body?

He is still short. The wall is tall as ever, still. The net looms even higher than it used to. But now, it is not enough to hide him from eyes that do behold.

::

There is an unspoken hierarchy to positions in volleyball. The most expendable are, more often than not, outside hitters. Removing a setter is kind of like pulling the spine out of a man and expecting him to walk still. You rarely switch them out; maybe when you need a defensive specialist, or a serving ace, or it’s set four to five and your starting player seems just about ready to cross the threshold of the afterlife.

Kageyama Tobio was the serving ace, when he went to the Olympics. He was nineteen. The next year, he was the defensive specialist, too. Now, he’s starting, and playing until the coach thinks they’re safe enough – or Tobio is breathing heavily enough – to put Atsumu in. That’s the way it goes. Dread always comes to Atsumu in the shape of one Kageyama Tobio.

At some point, their places were the other way around, and Atsumu was the best setter in Japan. Then again, at some point, Tobio was setting for Hinata Shouyou, and now that’s upside down, too. The first thing Atsumu thinks is: take that, Tobio. The second thing is: Tobio’s done it again.

“Hinata Shouyou,” Coach Foster introduces, like he needs introducing at all, “Our newest opposite hitter.” No kidding. Shouyou doesn’t look half of what “opposite hitter” is supposed to inspire, but he does look like he’s been carved – extremely delicately, for maximum torture on the watching party – out of marble, or clay, or sand, maybe.

Atsumu has a talent for seeing. He watches Shouyou as he greets every player with a beaming smile – a chest bump with Bokuto and a hug, but then that’s to be expected – until settling finally on him, with decidedly less pleasure etched across each devastating feature.

“Miya-san.”

“Shouyou-kun.”

Atsumu wants to say some things. First, I told you, that match in high school, I told you I’d set for you one day. Then, a question: what happened to you?

::

They have a mock match that first day, in Shouyou’s honor; more so, probably, to see how he will sync up with the rest of the team. Sakusa eyes him up and down, like he’s trying to figure out what exactly to do with him. This is alright, because Bokuto has already briefed Shouyou on his eccentric traits.

“May I shake your hand after practice,” he finally asks, more declares, and Shouyou nods. (As it turns out, Sakusa says this to be able to reach his hand sanitizer before, and then jump into the shower after a few seconds of hand-to-hand contact). Miya gives them a look from the service line.

Here’s the thing: they don’t tell you how great a real court feels, not until you get to it. Parquet is nice, all young and wooden and shiny like they were in high school; the sand is something else, bending gravity and will, and hell after the comforts of a hard surface. The real court – the national stage, in high school, or the professional one after – is made so you can bounce, just like the ball you hit, and reach some godly lengths nobody really knows the ends of.

Miya’s serve sounds like an explosion against the other side of the court. Shouyou feels the beating of the ball against theirs – one, two, three – as he readies for his next one. Then, the familiar smack against flesh, and it’s up, and Shouyou needs to make sure it doesn’t stay like that long enough.

Barnes sends the balls stinging into Shouyou’s arms, while his feet greedily stick to the floor. Some steps – one, two, three – and his legs crack slightly to launch him into flight, where his hand finds its target and silently sends it shooting into the ground.

He breathes, and there’s no sand trailing down his lungs anymore.

::

All collisions do not sound the same. Many factors go into the exact chemistry to make up that deafening snap, and one must listen closely to figure this out. The right side of the hand hits differently from the left. The cross always sounds like an echo compared to the straight. Kageyama’s tosses sounded like piano keys shattering. Miya’s tosses are more like violin strings mid-tune. It makes Shouyou feel unpleasant in all the right ways.

They don’t win the match; Bokuto is particularly sharp on his game that day, and armed with Meian and Barnes, too. Still, he slaps Shouyou on the back and tries – in a moment of maturity highly unexpected of him – to look a little less proud than he clearly is.

“Just wait until you sync up,” he sings, on the tired trek back to the locker room, “The training camp will get you right back up to speed.” He dwells on this thought, probably remembering the training camp they’d met at all of five years ago, because he ruffles Shouyou’s disgustingly sweaty hair.

“That sure brings back memories, huh, Hinata.”

“Good ones?” Miya asks, hastening his pace to stand next to them.

“The best!” Bokuto sighs. “Seems like just yesterday I was teaching him the block-out.” He seems to find this hilarious, for some reason, and cackles in a distinctly Bokuto way.

“I relate. How many of our spikes did you receive in the chest back then, Shouyou-kun?”

Bokuto whistles as he goes ahead. “I taught him that, too.”

Something is off about Miya, in that eerie way you feel after a flash of deja-vu, or when you find yourself ambling to the kitchen and forget why. Shouyou doesn’t quite know what. It is not the clear arrogance with which he carries himself; this, Shouyou would take in stride, as the well-deserved badge of honor befitting a world class setter. It’s not the constant challenge in his eyes, or the upwards twist of his lips. Maybe it’s the sound of his sets. Maybe it’s all the things he simply isn’t.

“Well, you were good with your hands today, Shouyou-kun.”

“Thanks, Miya-san.”  

“Atsumu.” Miya coughs behind him.

“Sorry?”

“Call me Atsumu,” he says, with his insufferable grin, “We’re on the same team now.”

Shouyou nods, though he is intentionally scanning the locker room instead of Miya’s face.

“And Shouyou-kun?”

“Yes, Atsumu-san?”

“Are your hands good at other things, I wonder?”

::

Maybe Shouyou has always been a little like concrete, even before he swallowed all the sand to form the batter. When he was young – really young, before the shed, before Natsu could properly talk – his father left, and everyone thought this would shatter him.

It didn’t, but it did shatter his mother. There was some kind of mourning period where they never spoke of it, when his mother was picking up the pieces, and Shouyou witnessing the harms of being made of glass. Then, in the way all sad and good mothers do, she pulled herself together and consulted a pink book on how to pull Shouyou along with her, too.

The book recommended they talk about love, and so they did. Shouyou was six when his mother asked him that bizarre question: “How would you describe love?”

Shouyou thought on that long and hard, about the nights he pretended not to hear mom cry and the days he pretended not to want letters from dad. He promptly decided love must be something a little like the smell of a candle right after it’s blown out.

Now, he reconsiders. It seems to him like something he might be likelier to think about Atsumu’s flirting. It is constant, insistent, unwanted, and leaves a bitter taste on the tongue long after it’s gone.

Case in point:

Atsumu slings an arm around Shouyou’s shoulders after drills, as they’re preparing for cardio.

“You have a mean jump, ya know.” For your height, rings unspoken in the air, home in Shouyou’s mind.

“Thank you, Atsumu-san.” His voice should have enough grit in it. Clearly not.

“I see what Tobio-kun saw in you.”

The landmines go off.

::

Here’s what Atsumu wants to say: Shouyou-kun, when you jump, I kind of want to believe in a god, and I don’t know how you’re real, or how Tobio ever managed to have you and lose you and still keep himself.

Here’s what Atsumu does say:

“You look really hot in black.”

“Atsumu-san, it’s 7AM.”

“Does that mean you progressively look better later in the day?” Shouyou slams his locker door closed.

“Hey, hey, hey! I come bearing mochi.”

Shouyou is, apparently, more interested in Bokuto’s frankenstein of an attempt at homemade mochi than he is in Atsumu. That’s that, then.

::

Atsumu isn't as stupid at he sounds, not always anyway; he was blessed with the gift of sight at birth. He could set a ball blindfolded and lying on the ground, with the memory of the court and the whisper of an approach. This is half the reason why Osamu has called him Mr. Sucks-At-Life the better part of a decade.

“Setting is not a life skill, Tsumu.” Osamu tells him on the phone now, when he mentions his troubles, “Maybe you should try talking.”

He would, if he could. Words wring themselves out of him, sometimes, haphazardly tossed around like letters in a toddler’s alphabet pasta. They rarely make sense to anyone who isn’t Osamu, and unfortunately this population forms the majority of society, but that’s not Atsumu’s fault, hey, just like it’s not Atsumu’s fault that Osamu chose to break off and leave him to his own devices like the quitter he is.

“Don’t you think it means something? That I’m not going?” Osamu asked him, waving him off to All-Youth Camp with a frown. Atsumu said no.

Then, there was Nationals. There was Karasuno, boasting one Kageyama Tobio and a Hinata Shouyou, an odd mismatch of every trait Atsumu thought ill-advisable for a volleyball player, a stark contrast in this way or the other. They played, and Shouyou jumped – not blindly, in reality, but probably in spirit, with trust given and forgotten – and things made a little more sense, when Atsumu beheld his own greed on Shouyou’s face.

“When you get hungry, and you eat a bite of something, you get hungrier.” That’s how Osamu explained it, and that’s why he’s the one who’s good with words. The way Atsumu got it was this:

“When you see someone enjoying their food, you also want to enjoy it with them.”

The irony was driven home on their return, when Osamu announced the bites he wanted to have were of real food, not volleyball. The fact of the matter is: Atsumu’s only ever had his sets to speak for him, and Osamu to reach out for them. Currently, they’re both failing him.

::

“Have you found a place to stay yet?” Bokuto asks Shouyou, mouth half-full as he devours his lunchbox.

“Not yet. I was so busy getting ready for tryouts.”

“You know, Omi-Omi’s neighbor—”

“Bokuto, no—”

“Has just recently moved out! Wouldn’t that be great, Omi-Omi?” Sakusa doesn’t deign that with an answer.

“Or you could just stay with me.” Atsumu pipes up, “I’m a good roommate. And I’m easy on the eyes.” A look up and down Shouyou. “So are you, actually.”

“No, thank you.”

Sakusa, maybe out of pure goodness of heart, or in a bid to annoy the hell out of Atsumu, sighs at Shouyou’s response.

“I suppose it’s a separate apartment…”

Kenma comes to help Shouyou move in a week later, even though he lives on the other side of the country. His reasoning is that he has enough money for a private flight and IKEA furniture, and that it’s his business how Shouyou is living, anyway, because he likes to know what he’s sponsoring. There’s really not much more arguing with that.

“Why’re you so annoyed with Miya?” he asks, "working" on his phone, but really just scrolling through Twitter. “It’s not like you.”

“Yeah, well, he’s not like most people.”

“Or maybe he’s just not like Kageyama?” Silence.

::

The bad thing about Atsumu is that he’s an excellent setter. Not the best, but he was, once. His gaze is a little like the feeling left on your hand once a pet has licked it. His sets sound unfamiliar, but they always seem right.

“That was pretty good, wasn’t it?” He asks, when he’s sure he’s done something just a bit better, and he usually has. Shouyou affirms.

“Thank you, I like to be acknowledged for my talent.”

“Your humility is striking.”

“They say I make an impression.” Not a very good one. Shouyou moves to the receiving line.

(After practice, as he’s grabbing his water bottle from the bench, he feels Atsumu at his back.

“Shouyou-kun, can I ask you something?”

“Yes, Atsumu-san?”

“Did it always feel right, with Tobio-kun?”

“No,” he chews out, “But it never felt wrong.”

“Hmm.” Atsumu hums. “Alright. Hit some serves for me.” Shouyou does.)

::

It is their third year. With the liberty of having a copy of the key, Tobio and Hinata almost live in the gym. Part of it is the upcoming spring tournament, the last of its kind; the last spring of them, with shared breaths and ice cream cones and bike journeys through the night. The other part is how they pretend not to want to hold hands, lying on the ground after they’re done with the ball.

If Tobio is good enough this time around, he’ll have a few V-League offers to choose from. A hundred eyes will be watching, in the Tokyo Central Gym, and Tobio will only be watching Hinata, breathing in the last of the spring.

Hinata doesn’t know Tobio looks at him when they’re pretending on the floor. His eyes are closed, his hands are still clutching a ball to his chest, trying to imprint themselves onto the terrain. Tobio thinks that’s better.

“I’ll miss this, I think.” Hinata says one day, in that same position.

“What?”

“Miyagi. Karasuno.” Us, Tobio hears in his mind, the twin to Hinata’s own.

“It’s not going anywhere, dumbass.” He replies, and he hopes Hinata understands.

::

(Loving Kageyama did not feel like the smell of a candle after it’s blown out, but it did feel a little like burning.)

::

This happens right before the training camp:

It’s morning practice. They’re all tired. Shouyou has only now switched from the receiving side to the attack line and slammed down a fearsome spike. He catches Atsumu looking at him, like usual. Like usual, he averts his gaze.

In the locker room, the stare persists. If things continued as usual, Shouyou would not mind it. He’d get dressed, jog out of the room to worry about other problems.

(“So, MSBY Jackals,” Kageyama sounds on the phone. “You never said anything.”

“Wanted to wait until it was for sure.” Shouyou lies. He knows he lies. Kageyama must, too.

Silence. Then:

“You’re back.” He chokes, but just a little.

“Yeah.”)

Shouyou is already flammable, and Atsumu is ignition. Things don’t go the way they’d usually go.

“Can I help you, Atsumu-san?” He asks, with all the polite force he can muster. Atsumu is not fazed by this. His head is cocked to the side, his smile is just as aloof on the curve of his lips.

“I can think of a million ways you could help me, Shouyou-kun.”

“I can think of a million reasons not to.”

“Oh?” Atsumu pipes up. “Name one.”

Shouyou doesn’t say anything as he stuffs his towels into his duffel bag.

“See, Shouyou-kun,” Atsumu puts a hand on his shoulder, “One of these days, you’re gonna wanna look at me. So, I’m not fussed just yet.”

::

Shouyou lists three reasons, once a respectable distance away from Atsumu’s eyes. These are:

Kageyama didn’t ask to see him. Why didn’t Kageyama ask to see him?

He’s never looked away from Kageyama. It’s a little like instinct.

Atsumu isn’t Kageyama.

::

A spiker must not look at his setter when he spikes. The minute you look away from the ball, and the place you must make for it on the ground, you’ve already missed a million opportunities to produce that crackling sound of a shot well-hit. Shouyou never makes this mistake. He followed the ball 18,555 kilometers and twelve time zones away, once, into an ocean of sand. He would do it again.

A setter only ever looks at his spikers. The angle, the speed, the height, all determine themselves. The setter determines the spiker, and so he looks at his armory of ball-seeking monsters every second of every game. Sometimes, if you’re lucky enough to be a favorite, he just might look only at you for those glorious few seconds of a toss.

(When Shouyou approaches Atsumu after practice the next day, it means something, probably.

“Hey,” he calls out, looking Atsumu dead in the eyes, ball clutched in his arms like a shield, “Can I toss for you?” And Atsumu gets it, probably, because he grins.

“I thought you’d never ask.”)

Murphy’s Law dictates: whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. This has been true in Shouyou’s life at most turns. It’s still true, because the room arrangements are laid out on a sheet of paper stuck to the back door of the team bus, and they indicate he’s roomed with a Miya, Atsumu.  

A team bus is only describable by the word chaos, and that is mostly an understatement. It’s not that they couldn’t take a plane, or that they have to take the ferry – a full busload of professional athletes, in jersey jackets and shorts – but it’s not like this is a choice, either. A team bus is the only necessity in life that is actually not necessary at all.

The extended team – comprised of Coach Foster and his assistants, their trainers, their publicists, doctor, nutritionist – are all mercifully occupying the identical bus trailing behind them. This has given Bokuto the liberty to commandeer the AUX cord, but only a respectable three rows away from Sakusa, who has commandeered the entire front half of the bus.

At some point in the chaos, while ten grown-ups are picking seats much the same way twelve-year-olds do on school buses, Shouyou finds himself the only one still standing. Atsumu shoots him an amused, expectant look.

“I knew eventually you’d make a move on me, Shouyou-kun.”

“Sitting next to you is considered a move?”

“You've got more interesting things in mind, then?”

Shouyou shoves his headphones onto his head. This only lasts so long, because Bokuto is intent on blasting every dance anthem that has ever existed. To Shouyou’s eternal horror, Barnes and Adriah (two blocks of steel, tall enough that they have to duck their heads through doors) are playing right along, performing what Shouyou can only define as a poor rendition of a dance routine that was probably only ever fashionable in the 70s.

“Next time,” Atsumu advises, nudging him in the side, “You should bring earplugs. That’s what Omi-kun does.”

::

The last time Shouyou was on a team bus, he was eighteen and Kageyama was next to him. They were on their way to Tokyo, drinking milk out of children’s cartons, and trying to pretend the proximity wasn’t getting to both of them in a number of different ways. Shouyou isn’t pretending with Atsumu.

Bokuto-san

Can we switch seats

Read 12:27

No

Are you crazy

I can’t leave the AUX cord

Or Omi will drown us on Bach

Or Mozart

Or both

are those the same thing

That’s that, then.

“Hey,” Atsumu nudges him again, shifting slightly in his seat, “Do you want some?” Shouyou’s eyes locate the onigiri he’s offering with the precision of a sniper. This is confirmation enough for Atsumu, who promptly places one in his hand.

“Thank you. I’ll get you a coffee or something, once we’re on the ferry.”

“Don’t bother. It’s Samu’s onigiri, he ain’t gonna miss a few.”  

“Do you miss him?” The question has leapt out before he can catch it. At least Atsumu is just as surprised to hear it.

“Kind of. It’s like your school backpack, you know? You don’t really love it, but hey, it’s your backpack, and you carry it around all day.” Then, a second later, “That sounds a little dumb.”

“It doesn’t.” Shouyou thinks if he tried hard enough, he could maybe touch the hand of the shadow sitting next to him, impatiently asking him the next question of their boring old card game, betting chocolate milk that he won't get it. “I understand that.”

They silently chew on their onigiri for a few minutes. The shadow gives up his pursuit of Shouyou’s attention; maybe he’s returned to his source, also hurtling his own way to doom in a team bus, to another side of Japan.

“Do you, Shouyou-kun?” Shouyou’s eyes lift up.

“Sorry?”

“Do you miss him?”

::

Atsumu whistles in the elevator, on the way to their room after dinner.

“Two beds? This is homophobia.” He declares, loudly throwing himself onto the closest one. They slip into bed wordlessly, with alarms firmly set at 7AM. Lights off. Shouyou closes his eyes.

“Shouyou-kun.” Atsumu calls, a few minutes later. “Are you awake?”

“No.” A pause.

“Wanna play some beach tomorrow?”

“We’re training tomorrow.”

“Not in the evening we’re not. Unless you have other kinds of training in mind.” Shouyou groans. This amuses Atsumu.

“It’s okay. By the time the three weeks are over, you’ll be so impressed with me, you're gonna say yes anyway.”

“Sure,” Shouyou mumbles, keeping his eyes shut, “Why not.”

Atsumu has a way with irony.

::

It’s impressive that it takes Bokuto (probably prodded by a curious Coach Foster) a whole month and half a training camp to ask the burning question everyone is wondering. Where’s the quick?

“I just haven’t worked on it.” Shouyou replies, in half a truth. Bokuto nods and gives him a slap on the back before he speeds off to lunch. Atsumu is watching all this unfold from his corner of the gym.

It’s not that Shouyou thought it wouldn’t come up, or that he never meant to get to it. It’s about that “new” thing that Shouyou is, still shivering in the aftershock of birth, still aching to crawl back to its own genesis. The quick was something that made itself, once. He contributed to it, by providing a hand; Kageyama did, by providing the ball, and the quick did all the rest. Still, it smells like the zeitgeist of that first spring, and feels like a familiar hand reaching to pull his breath out of him.

“So,” Atsumu asks, “How are we doing this?” Beats me, Shouyou wants to hum, but he just jumps instead.

::

Last time Shouyou was at a training camp, they were in Tokyo. It went like this:

They didn’t have the professional budget, so the whole team stayed in the same room, sprawled over dusty futons. This was fine, it was the way it was every year. Kageyama and he were next to each other. They pretended they didn’t want to hold hands under the covers.

“I made the national team.” He told Shouyou the first night. Shouyou let out a breath.

“That’s amazing.” It was. It was also a little like the beginning of the end.

“I’m going to Brazil.” He told Kageyama on day four, like he was confessing a sin. “After graduation. Not immediately, but soon.”

“Why?” And there might have been a million things to say. I have to get my wings. I have to stand tall enough on my own, so I can soar when you set for me.

“I’m going to try beach,” he tried instead, “For a while, I mean.” And Kageyama knew he lied, probably, but he didn’t ask.

On day seven, before that rude return to reality, they didn’t talk. They pretended they weren’t holding hands under the covers.

::

On his pursuit of his wings, Shouyou trained with Coach Ukai and a dozen kids barely shorter than him, once. “You’re the one in control of the quick,” he told Shouyou, screaming in his soul after his first season of defeat, “First, you have to understand that. You need to know your weapons.”

It took the heat of a furnace for him to be molded out of concrete, but he knows these, now. His hands, sure at his sides; his legs, as a proponent of flight, and his eyes, whenever he isn’t looking at Atsumu’s stupid face contorted into a grin.

“You’re doing it wrong, you know,” he tells Shouyou, “The quick I mean. You're doing it the way you used to in high school.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re pretty touchy about this, huh?”

“I think the quick works just fine.” That's a lie. Sometimes Shouyou forgets Atsumu cannot know that.

“You know,” Atsumu pauses. He licks his lips and trails to the right side of the court. “You’re not the player you were in high school, Shouyou-kun. Why hit the same quick you used to?”

He was a crow in high school, trying to fly on featherless wings. He doesn’t know what he is, now, not quite yet, other than that "something new"; he just knows it’s older and stronger and searching for a shade.

“You have a better alternative, Atsumu-san?”

“You tell me.”

Atsumu dribbles the ball, and it is suddenly the rhythm of the ticking Shouyou has only just stripped out of. Once, his first spring spent chasing the ball, a whole team had to come together to teach him out of someone else’s shadow. Now, nothing shields Shouyou anymore, and that’s a slightly scary thought.

“Do you want to—”

“Yes.” Atsumu’s already trekking his way to the ball cart. “Yes.”

::

(There’s the familiar wind in his face. Shouyou hits. His hand is concrete around the ball.

Shouyou looks at Atsumu.

A little higher?

Yes.

He hits again.

A second too quick.

No, try half a step behind. There. Yes.

He hits again.

That. Now angle it lower. Just a bit.

He hits again. It’s lightning, when he jumps. Thunder, when the ball meets the floor again. It is the first sound in the gym, since the measly smack of the last ball.

Shouyou looks at Atsumu. Then, without prompting or grace, they roar.)

::

“Shouyou-kun.” Atsumu calls that night, when they’re both settled snugly in bed. “Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

::

Coach Foster thinks their dynamic might be MSBY’s golden ticket. Here are the reasons for this.

• One time, during a practice match, Miya set the ball to Hinata cross-court, doubled over, as it was about to fall. How that became a quick, nobody quite understood. Hinata was already in the air when Miya hit the ground, and that made all the difference.
• Hinata can do everything. So can Miya. That’s a threatening explosion. Especially when they wink at each other.
• Hinata set Miya a first-touch with his foot, once, a block-out that Bokuto was sure had already hit the ground. When Miya slammed it into the opposite side of the court, the team was divided on which of the two had really scored the point.
• When they think Coach Foster isn’t looking, they look at each other. Anything that follows is twice as dangerous, and three times likelier to be slightly impossible.
• Hinata never really falls. He has a way of landing, like a shooting star, crashing into the ground with intentional force.
• Miya has a way of watching Hinata mid-air. Coach Foster thinks if Hinata fell, they both might feel the same pain.

It’s not like these duos don’t rear their monstrous heads in every level of the sport. Brazil have won three consecutive world titles off the back of their own, France’s has beaten them a respectable two times. It’s not like they don’t exist. But isn’t it bizarre, to see for yourself that they really do?

::

They have a party on the beach, their final night. Bokuto’s procured floral crowns, though nobody quite knows how he’s managed this. He’s also managed to eat half the team’s barbecue. This, at least, is to be expected, and Meian has already planned for it beforehand, arriving ten minutes later with reinforcements from the hotel kitchen.

“Is this the night we finally play beach?” Atsumu calls over, from where he’s sitting at the table. He’s put his feet firmly on it, his arms behind his back, as he absentmindedly scans the sky. “You did promise, Shouyou-kun.”

Shouyou has, but that’s kind of an admission to an unpleasant truth, so he considers pretending not to hear. Bokuto, as the agent of pure chaos, does not allow him this.

“Hey! Did someone say we’re playing beach?” Shouyou can see Sakusa’s attention snap from his phone to them. “Dibs on Hinata. Who else is coming?”

If Atsumu sounded nonchalant before, it was purely tactical. Shouyou watches as he reaches into his bag – too bulky to hold anything of normal volume and shape, he really should have known – and gingerly pulls out a volleyball. He grins, and to Shouyou’s horror, he grins right back.

“If Bokkun gets you, we get first serve.” Atsumu declares loudly. Sakusa takes his mask off.

“Be my guest.”

Bokuto gets that first serve up easily, and Shouyou’s old mind comes to life. Simultaneously, somehow, he knows where the wind will blow, how much sand to displace in his jump, the two and a quarter steps he should take instead of the ceremonial three. The sand recognizes its own son.

The fact that it doesn’t recognize Atsumu is probably the only reason they get that first point. He’s almost exactly the right place, more than the right angle. If the ground had given him that tiniest push, that would have been a perfect first-touch set. But.

“Don’t get too excited,” he adds dismissively, as if he isn’t flushed in embarrassment, “I’ll get the next one.”

Then, two amazing things happen in quick succession. First, Shouyou looks at him blush. Really looks, with intent. Then, Atsumu does get the next one, and it’s a little divine.

::

At some point, it all goes to hell again. As always, it’s Bokuto’s fault. He’s the one that launches them into the game, which he quickly leaves to put on a playlist titled “running through the woods naked;” he’s the first to take his shirt off, also, and definitely the only one to throw it at an increasingly more menacing Meian, which is positively hilarious to Inunaki, who is now filming the whole thing, half on Snapchat and half on Instagram Live, with surprisingly colorful commentary. Barnes is cheering loudly – for both teams, actually, which is not helping – while Meian is watching over them in total disappointment.

“How are they even scoring against Hinata?” Inunaki asks, more to his audience than them. Shouyou wonders much the same thing. He can think of a few things.

The wind is definitely blowing against them. This doesn’t help. Bokuto is also not helping, with his fluctuating moods, and his Akaashi withdrawal that only a dose of Akaashi will solve. Atsumu isn’t, with his stupid vision, knowing where Shouyou will be every second of every rally. Or the many other ways he’s distracting, all marble under moonlight, glowing against the unknowns of the sea.

The one saving grace is that they technically do win. And that Sakusa is too bored (probably too tired, also, but it’s not like anyone has the courage to point this out) to carry on with the match after half an hour. Inunaki is slightly livid, because his commentary was actually doing really well on Live, but Bokuto throws himself on the sand immediately after Sakusa quits, and thus robs him of the chance to protest.

“Man, I’m beat.” He huffs, and he’s probably right, because Shouyou feels the same telltale sting in his calves. Then, a second later, “Damn. I have sand all over me now.”

Again, it’s Bokuto’s fault, because he promptly launches himself into the cold night’s sea. This, at least, restores Inunaki’s mood.

“Hey! Come on, don’t be shy!” Atsumu is looking at Shouyou.

No, Shouyou manages in his mind; it feels like his last line of defense against something he can’t pinpoint yet. Atsumu has already tugged on his wrist and pulled him in.

They collide with the water in a loud splash, like a loose train crashing into it. Shouyou rubs his eyes.

“You look really hot.” Atsumu points out, with that slight flush that seems to be getting at Shouyou now, “Have I ever told you you look really hot?” He doesn’t bother trying to hide his eyes sweeping greedily over Shouyou, even though Shouyou does conceal his own.

“Yes. A lot of times, actually. In numerous ways.”

“Hmm.” Atsumu hums. “Maybe it’s time you say it back. I know I can think of a million other ways to tell you.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe.”

Atsumu’s hands are on his waist, when Inunaki’s voice raises to a shriek. “This shouldn’t be on a Live.” Probably not.

::

(This happens at the door of their room.

“You still haven’t said it.” Shouyou rolls his eyes.

“I don’t think you need me to tell you you’re hot, Atsumu-san.”

“No. The first thing.” Shouyou remembers the origin of all this. It is a bizarre moment of clarity.

“I think.” A pause. “I think you just might be the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen, Atsumu-san.”)

::

Murphy’s Law again. Approximately 800 kilometers away, at a similar beach resort based (ironically) in Osaka, Kageyama Tobio is sitting cross-legged on the sand. He has the MSBY Instagram page glowing on his phone, and is staring at the smiling face of one Hinata, Shouyou, 22, new opposite hitter. If he wasn’t away at camp on some island 800 kilometers away, and if Tobio was not leaving at 5AM on a plane because their team bus had broken down, maybe they might have seen each other.

Last time Tobio was at a training camp, it was for the national team. He was sitting on the bench, checking his Instagram – again, for Hinata, Shouyou, then 21, beach volleyball player – when he’d come across a picture of this target and Oikawa Tooru. This was decidedly not a dream, because Ushijima, upon being shown the post for confirmation, had looked equally perplexed and given Tobio a pat of consolation.

One time, Tobio begged Oikawa for advice. It went like this:

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” he told Tobio, “At the end of the day, the one who is ultimately in control of the quick set isn’t you. It’s the shortie.”

Tobio already knew he was being tugged through life by whatever force of nature Hinata held, but hearing it made it better, kind of. They slithered though the concrete, one falling toss and looming jump at a time, older and newer and ghastly, out of the spring of their youth.

That was before this void they’re in. How do you drag yourself through something you don’t see?

There he is now – Hinata, Shouyou, 22, new opposite hitter, on the beach – laughing on Tobio’s Instagram feed, surrounded by a dozen familiar faces, wrapped in a pair of arms, white against the tan of his torso. Tobio feels a lot like he had in that national team locker room, when he’d first witnessed how achingly close 18,555 kilometers could feel if you wanted it to be farther away.

::

Not every collision sounds the same. Kageyama’s tosses sounded like shattering piano keys. Atsumu’s sound more like violin strings mid-tune. Maybe they could become a symphony, if Shouyou let them, and that’s a pretty thought.

Shouyou likes when his feet crash into sure, steady, hard ground. Maybe it’s because he’s been in a collision course for so long, flying through crisp air with no end in sight, or because he feels the collision imminent in his bones, that he hears it in his heart when his mouth smashes into Atsumu’s.

::

(There was no book for mastering sex. There was, instead, a sea of infinite bodies in Rio, waiting for exploration in just as many different beds. Shouyou learned how to make love in Brazil, to strangers and friends and everyone in between, and one time to something more.

“Do you want to come over?” Atsumu asks, getting off the team bus back in Osaka. The question he wants to ask is really which of these he is.

“That depends. Will you make me dinner?”

“Do you want me to?” A second. Then:

“No. Let’s get takeout.”)

::

Atsumu’s apartment is in a nice part of Umeda – very close to Bokuto’s, Atsumu adds, as if that’ll change Shouyou’s mind – and on the seventh floor of an art-deco building with a paradoxically Japanese garden. Once Atsumu sees Shouyou perched on his favorite velvet sofa, shining against the dark red abyss of the fabric, no amount of good food could have distracted him anyway.

They lie in bed in the afterglow. Atsumu orders sushi off a delivery app, even though it’s easier to just put the rice cooker on. It lets him, if nothing else, dwell in Shouyou’s sphere longer.

“You have a lot of things, Atsumu-san.” Shouyou points out, staring around his room lazily. He’s not wrong. Atsumu has a massive closet, built by a carpenter expressly for his needs; the living room sofas are matched with the drapes, and tiny porcelain trinkets that his grandmother habitually buys for him line at least one shelf in any room.

“Are you calling me vain, Shouyou-kun?” Shouyou rolls his eyes.

“No, I’m saying you have a lot of things.” He rises out of bed in a terrifying, beautiful arch, pulls on his shorts and t-shirt. Atsumu barely manages not to trip over the covers.

It is clear Shouyou is no stranger to these arrangements from the way he ambles around Atsumu’s apartment, hands locked behind his back and eyes out front. First, around his bedroom. He stops around Atsumu’s trophy shelves, trailing a finger over the familiar one from third year Spring High.

“What did you say about vanity?”

“Let me live, Shouyou-kun.” The sight of him is fatal enough. Shouyou chuckles.

In the kitchen, his eyes pore over every photo Atsumu’s mother has pinned on his fridge, even as he dips his sushi into soy sauce and chews with rigor.

“Tell me about that one.” Shouyou asks, and Atsumu does. “And that one. To the right.”

He insists that he can't stay the night, and even though he makes a hundred brilliant excuses that seem sounder than they should, that’s still all they are.

“You’ve really lived in this place.” He says, pulling his sneakers on. “That’s what I meant.”

“Where else was I supposed to live?”

“I don’t know.” A pause. Then, “I’ll see you at practice tomorrow.”

::

Yamaguchi first mentions a reunion to Shouyou three weeks before the start of the season.

“Kozume-san called me.” Shouyou is cooking up the day’s batch of boiled chicken as he eyes his blender for his smoothie.

“He did?”

“Yeah, about the reunion.”

“What reunion?”

“You just returned from the other side of the world.” The eye roll is evident in Yamaguchi’s voice.

“But I’ve already met Kenma.”

“Maybe he thinks you could do with meeting more people.”

“Hang on one second.”

He pulls the pot off the stove, pours the content of the blender into a large glass, and picks his phone back up with the feeling of approaching dread.

“Who’s at this reunion?”

“Kozume-san said just friends.” But then, Kenma has newly developed a taste and talent for hyperbole.

For a while, they just talk to catch up. Yamaguchi relays information about Tsukishima’s reception of the t-shirt, and Yachi’s upcoming birthday party, and Nishinoya’s latest conquests in Bhutan. Then, in that stressed moment where both parties of a phone call realize the need to hang up is upon them, he sighs.

“He's going to be there,” he points out, tentatively, “At the reunion.”

Silence.

::

(“I got what you meant. About the many things.”

“Okay.”

“You could have many things, too. Now that you’re here.”

“Yeah. I could.” Another question hangs in the air, unasked.)

::

Aran used to say his mother must have mixed up the babies when naming them. The reasoning, which he only revealed after Osamu's great betrayal, was that "hunger" sounded a lot more like Osamu than it did Atsumu.

To Atsumu, this seemed like a pesky need at thematic cohesion, one Aran was employing slyly to ease him into Osamu's playtime passion, or whatever else he liked to call it; it made Atsumu think of the many times Osamu must have sat down with him and just talked (his overrated, sorry talent), and the many times Aran had listened to him love something silently that Atsumu did not.

Atsumu disagrees. Here’s their difference: Aran knows what he listens to, and Atsumu just knows, because he’s known Osamu every sorry second of his second-best existence. He’s the one with structure, grounding, balance, all those things that really should have made him the better athlete had he had some kind of adhesive to the sport. Atsumu was armed with a grand total of zero; he boasted terrible grades to match terrible attitude, a world-class ability to steer clear of any misguided sympathy, and a sizeable enough portfolio of brushes with death that still worry Osamu about his crossing the road alone. Still, about one thing he was eternally greedy, and he’d devoted every moment scraped from surviving to that thing alone.

“I think you’re something special.” Kita told him, when he felt these micromovements of displeasure that even Osamu did not, “Everyone will see that, so don’t worry.”

Kita understood, as he did everything. One day, he would be showing Atsumu to strangers on the TV, smile into the air as it filled his lungs, and proudly say that was his kouhai. He does, now. Still, Atsumu’s greed lives on.

It’s a quick transition from the training camp to Shouyou acquiring a drawer of his closet. This is for convenience, he explains, because his own apartment is not furnished and he’d hate to host Atsumu. Atsumu is not complaining. Every night, when Shouyou breathes in those final seconds before the great field of dreams, he watches him slip away and hopes in characteristic greed that he’ll want another drawer, and then maybe more of Atsumu within it.

::

Once Shouyou’s apartment is installed properly and completely, he invites Bokuto, Sakusa and Atsumu over for dinner. It’s a measly week away from the start of the season, and they’re all wearing the exhaustion around their necks, next to the boredom born of a high protein diet.

“I won’t tell if you won't,” Shouyou says, piling the tempura onto his plate. No one has any intention of telling.

The food is a small sin that they can stomach committing, but alcohol isn’t. This staple of an adults’ night-in is replaced with refreshing drinks, and the duty of inciting fun falls on Bokuto’s shoulders instead. His grand idea is watching the highlights of last season.

Put four professional athletes in a room, none of them will complain about watching more sports. Predictably, they don’t. Some videos are from the official V-League channel, titled match by match; others – Bokuto’s favorites – are compiled by various volleyball fan pages, and named such things as “Bokuto Koutarou: King of Outside Hitters,” or “Sakusa Kiyoomi: Japan’s Quiet Wave.”

They’re ten minutes into Atsumu’s best actions when there he pops up, on an ad break: Kageyama eating curry with a frown that would put a rock to shame. Shouyou has seen this before. The commercial, as he was browsing through videos; the face, a million different bets he lost and paid for in curry buns.

The first thing he thinks is, he’s grown. The second thing is, I want to see him.

“Have you talked to Kageyama at all?” Bokuto nudges him. “Our first match is with the Adlers.”

“Ew.”

“It’s disrespectful to yuck people just because they’re better than you.”

“Shut up, Omi-kun.”

I want to see him. But for the first time, instead of how: I’ll see you on the court.

Maybe there’s some kind of divine intervention in the fact that the Adlers are the first match of the season. Coach Foster decides Shouyou should be starting, since the opposite team have Ushijima Wakatoshi to show for themselves, and that is the kind of opponent asking more for him than the canon that is Barnes. That is fine. As it happens, it is also just right.

“Are you nervous?” Atsumu asks Shouyou on the team bus, right after Bokuto has fallen asleep.

“No.” It’s not a lie, but it’s not really true, either.

“Well, I am.”

“Why?”

“Just 'cause.”

::

(When you're hit by an earthquake, the first moments are always odd. You sit, and you think, is this really an earthquake, or is my chair unbalanced, or what? This is what happens to Shouyou when he hears Kageyama’s voice.

Then – as one does when one finally arrives to the logical conclusion that, yes, an unbalanced chair would not result in a trembling world and a swinging lamp, okay, this is an earthquake, and I should probably run outside – Shouyou’s mind catches up to his ears, and swiftly turns his body around to meet oncoming disaster.

“Kageyama-kun, you’ve grown.” He’s already dodged the ensuing smack before it manages to land.)

::

See, silence breeds questions. It needs be filled.

“I think I could beat you in arm-wrestling now.” It’s what they do.

“Wanna try me?”

“Later.”

I want to see you, he thinks. How can I see you?

Then the corridor is full of ghosts, suddenly; Atsumu, with an elbow firm on his shoulder, Bokuto shooting out of the locker room, Ushijima and then Hoshiumi with his half an inch’s victory. They block his sight, until the lights of the center court are bright on his back, and by then it's too late.

::

They say Tobio has a one-track mind. It runs along two lines. Volleyball, first. Hinata, in every second but.

“Tobio-kun, would ya mind not picking a fight with my wing spiker?” It means something, probably, when Miya places that arm on Hinata’s shoulder, and it’s that same arm from the beach. It probably means something when Hinata doesn’t shake it off.

“I didn’t. He picked one with me.”

It is what they do. From the start, this was a one-way journey that Hinata led him on. Tobio has imagined this moment every night, maybe, over the two years spent reaching through 18,555 kilometers, 12 time zones and a lifetime away. In his mind, just as many fractions of Hinata live on, stolen from the moments they were forged in sweat and smiles. He’s eternal, in Tobio, and no one gets that but him, maybe, just as they didn't get it that first collision in the Karasuno gym, but that’s fine.

“Kageyama,” Ushijima says to him, once they’re back in the locker room, after the flood of people has taken Hinata from him. “Pull yourself together.”

He means that as far as the volleyball, Tobio knows. He means, get the color back in your face, the feeling back in your bones, and let’s go. We’re all waiting for you. Tobio hasn’t been all together in two years, with half of him arching far and away in the sky, trying to hold onto to a fleeing shadow. If their hands met, it might be a little catastrophic.

::

(They shake hands under the net. A resounding rumble goes through the earth.)

The last time Shouyou saw Kageyama, they were in Rio, and it went a little like this:

The tequila was bitter. They ran out of the one lemon at some point, and though Shouyou swore up and down that there should be more, he was either mistaken or too drunk to be capable of locating any. They licked salt off their hands to chase after diluted alcohol, and it was funny. They were boys again, in the comfort of Shouyou’s backyard in Miyagi, and nothing had changed. Shouyou hadn’t packed up his whole life, and Kageyama hadn’t scored five aces against France, and they didn’t feel like strangers.

But they had. And they were still boys, as completely unaware of it as they felt. And they were drunk, and there was a yearning there, of the best friends who’d gone from seeing each other all day every day to weekends, then a couple times a month, and then not at all.

“Why didn’t you call?” It was the Olympics. He hadn’t expected it, but he asked all the same.

“You didn’t, either.” Kageyama choked a little. His eyes glided over to the pitcher they’d mixed the tequila and water in. He reached for it. “Why didn’t you?”

All Shouyou thought about then was the sand. The helplessness as he sunk into it, and the flight he so missed, and the mornings where he imagined its return, to the sound of Kageyama’s wind.

“I don’t know.” He lied. “Do you?”

“No.” And Kageyama lied as well. Shouyou knew this, because Kageyama did, and that made him privy, too. His cheeks burned.

Here’s the moment they collided. Kageyama sunk back, leaning towards the wall. The glass in his hand was dangerously tilted, kept upright maybe only by the tension of the moment, and Shouyou held his breath as he reached for it.

Kageyama sunk back, and Shouyou went sinking into him. It was a misstep. Maybe it wasn’t. No look was exchanged. Shouyou couldn’t remember the first touch. All he knew was the world shifted abysmally and then turned into all Kageyama, and that was fine with him.

Anyone who happened to play volleyball around the same time as the monster generation knows, two sets of twins have roamed the world and wrecked it to their liking. The Miya Twins, grinning silver and gold, sharing one face even though they tragically don’t share one love. Then, sprung out of concrete on manmade wings, there’s the Freak Twins of Karasuno, and all they’ve ever shared between them is love. For the ball, amongst other things.

Atsumu wields the gift of sight. He sees them look at each other through the net, now. He’s seen this a million times in his mind’s eye. It still breaks his heart, but only a little, and that’s fine.

He outright refuses to set that first ball into a quick, but also to give it to anyone but Shouyou. He sets it, and in a move breaking every rule in volleyball – take position, look at the ball, be alert – he fixes his eyes to the sky, where Shouyou rises, and he revels.

“I’m here.” Shouyou screams, as if he could break the heavens open. He probably could.

The first ball, were it a quick, would have been an eclipse. It would mean, here are two twins, freshly orphaned, and here is the sword they’ve managed to patch back together from the sighs of the ones that left. Instead it is Shouyou’s receive, Shouyou’s score; it is Shouyou’s ball, and anyone else has simply happened to touch it on its natural course. No one’s really surprised when it crashes into the floor. Damn it, Hoshiumi manages, with a grit and a smile, and that’s just about what everyone else is thinking, probably.

The second ball is a quick. It is only Tobio who attempts to get in its course, in the face of Shouyou’s reach through the stars, probably with a nostalgic nudge from pure muscle memory. It is a slight ricochet off his arms, but that’s all they need, anyway.

Here’s what that second ball means. Things fall apart, but when they come back together, sometimes they’ll stick even better.

::

It isn’t when Hinata sets Miya that cheeky spike, or when Miya dumps that cheekier ball. It happens when Tobio finds himself watching Hinata transition in the air, from the deadly tension of a spike to the soft pressure of a toss, and the ball stills for half a second in the air exactly where it should.

Tobio decided he wanted to be a setter when he watched the Adlers play the Jackals, all of fifteen years ago, and saw their setter touch every ball into a small miracle wherever it landed. For a long time, that was the goal: touch the ball just long enough, just right enough, fit these tiny collisions anywhere he could, between his grandfather’s games and his sister’s whims.

His grandfather was an observant man, and he caught on, eventually. He told Tobio this, and Tobio believed it in his heart: “If you get really good, I promise you, somebody even better will come and find you.”

Then, it became this. Touch the ball long enough, just right enough, and you’ll get to play more and more, and eventually, somewhere between the tracks, you’ll find something worth having eyes for. It is fifteen years later that Tobio understands his grandfather was wrong, that something had already found him, way long ago when he hadn’t broken through the concrete sky, and managed somehow to be enough still. Now, when Tobio sees him rise as a god in his own right, it is something else, a reason for worship and study and eternal improvement.

“I haven’t lost yet,” Hinata said, once, half a court away from him, “So I don’t get what you mean.”

Tobio’s hand is thrumming with electricity at his side, right before it comes up to collide with Hinata’s spike. Then, a toss to Hoshiumi – just long enough, just right enough – and there’s another point. Then, his whole team rushing to meet him where he serves the ball, like in those days of the spring he’s left behind, his hand puts it just low enough to meet the ground.

I haven’t lost yet, he thinks, hitting his fourth serve, eyes flitting between Hinata and the rest of the world, and he means it in every way he can.

::

Normally, Shouyou’s least favorite bit of a match is the ending, no matter which way it swings, because it means there is no more volleyball to play. Today is an exception.

The thing is: it is already the job of the opposite hitter to score. It’s a merciless role. They don’t get a second, the way outside hitters and middle blockers do. They’re not expected to pass balls. They’re expected to hit, and hit well, and hit hard. Score. Soar.

This makes Shouyou the exception. He’s not natural artillery that he’s meant to be, but sometimes you get to realize that there’s nothing natural about him, anyway, and that he should probably be exempt from the rules.

It makes sense that Kageyama blocks that last strike. Shouyou has expected it. He bumps the ball up with a backwards twist of his foot, and he feels every muscle in his body taut when he does.

In his third year, he chose not to wear jersey number 4, as was expected of him. He refused, even though he was the top scorer, and that little push of air beneath everyone’s feet whenever their legs said no. The “ace” wasn’t something he carried in his skeleton, even if it dwelled in the farthest corners of his mind and heart like an unreachable divinity. No one wore 4, and that was fine.

Bokuto scores the last point, while Kageyama and his middle blockers lock on Shouyou, and nature seems that much more redundant in those few seconds.

“Look at me,” Shouyou thinks, “Only at me.” They do.

::

(“You made it,” Tobio says, after the lights dim around them.

“Yeah. I’m here now.”

They realize, violently and at the same time, that they are the only obstructions ahead of them now, and that’s a little too much.)

There are two kinds of shadows. The shadow that hides, and the shadow that follows. Tonight, they will collide. 

The reunion is badly planned. No, Shouyou amends, it’s actually beautifully planned, because it’s been planned by Kenma, and that means a professional caterer has probably worked magic on every plant lining the walls. It’s at a fancy bar in Sendai, closed off for the night so all the ghosts of Shouyou’s past can gather in remembrance.

The reunion isn’t badly planned, it’s just badly timed. It shows that Kenma is not a professional athlete, from his willful assumption that they’ll be good to party after a four-set match. Still, somehow, he seems to have convinced everyone, including Shouyou, and that’s a very impressive, because Shouyou wasn’t even part of the invitation process, in the times he wasn’t actively trying to prevent it.

And so, here they are. Shouyou, Karasuno, and what seems to be half the Japanese national volleyball team. It’s a little poetic, really.

Predictably, Bokuto launches them into chaos first. He carries a platter of shots from the bar – to Shouyou’s horror, his other hand has firmly grasped a bottle of tequila, too – as he makes his way over to their corner. Sakusa gives him a once over before he, and Akaashi, both sound a loud, clear, “No.”

“Yes.” Bokuto declares. “We won! And it was my favorite disciple’s first match.”

Atsumu’s hand gets firmer on Shouyou’s thigh as Bokuto whines. “We don’t even have another match next week.”

“I’m the designated driver.” Sakusa points out, pulling his mask a little further up his nose. Bokuto has already started filling the glasses.

“You don’t have a car, Omi-kun. We’re in Sendai.”

Sakusa’s eyes search out Akaashi, their only remaining line of defense, and – as it happens – the only one armed with a vehicle and say over Bokuto. Akaashi shakes his head, and it is the start of the end.

::

The reunion is a terrifying occasion.

That is not well-put. More accurately: the concept of a reunion is terrifying. Both its lack, and its occurrence. The need for a reunion – an instance of coming back together – indicates two entities have been apart, which even by itself is immensely alarming to Tobio. There’s no way he could have guessed its actual materialization – the reunion of the people, the union of the selves, rather than the exchanges in crossfire over the net – would be far worse.

As he’s lived through the last two years, he’s done his utmost not to admit this – accepting, objectively, that two people who’ve lived 18,555 kilometers and 12 time zones away from each other would need, at some point, to come together again in a planned gathering and ask such things as “how have you been” and “how’s your sister” and “do you miss me, why are we reuniting, why are we apart, why—”and then try to pick up, if possible, where they left off.

So, maybe, it is more the distance that haunts Tobio. The 18,555 kilometers that have laid claim on something deceptively close, always, and tangibly so far.

The last time he saw Hinata was in Rio. He was terrified then, too, when he phoned Hinata, when he showed up at his door with his tiny red suitcase, when he tugged on Hinata’s wrist so very slightly to instigate that fall into him. The fears only doubled, tripled, multiplied with geometric insistence the closer they were. What if Hinata wasn’t home? Where should he put his tiny red suitcase? How many other people have wished to become Hinata’s world?

Reunions come pre-packaged with fear. The fear that maybe, just maybe, the decision to pick up their pasts and selves, which they should make over warm coffee and gooey brownies – or in their case, lemons and salt and watery tequila – might just not happen. Maybe there is nothing to pick up anymore. Maybe they’ll just have their lattes and share a brownie by a perfect divide in the middle, with the surgical precision of a knife the way near-strangers do, and then go their separate ways with the sure thought in mind that they’re over.

Tobio knew when Hinata was meant to land. He was on flight KL806, headed a hundred times faster than any serve Tobio has aced towards Seoul, where he would board KL791 to Tokyo, and land approximately at 14:45 Japan standard time; this is where Yamaguchi would pick him up and ask him a hundred stupid questions Tobio should have been asking, receiving a hug and souvenirs, and driving him to Miyagi in his mother’s rundown Honda. This information was acquired through a painful phone call with Tsukishima (“You’re pathetic,” rings Tsukishima’s voice, with no real venom, “I’m only helping you because you’re so pathetic.”), instead of the more direct method that would have involved a phone call with Hinata. Just to avoid the inevitable.

They talk, of course they talk. You can’t just cleave your presence in two and hope they don’t still hold hands through the air. But they don’t reunite, and that’s what’s important.

Except, when they do, it's destined to be doom. Tobio knows it will be, even as he strips out of his jersey in the locker room and emerges in a civilian’s shirt and jacket. The car ride is silent. Ushijima doesn’t like occasions of this kind, though he doesn’t hate them; he likes Hinata, though, enough to wear his sleeves rolled up as he drives through the evening sky.

“Do you wish not to go?” He asks at some point.

“No.” Tobio chews on the insides of his cheeks. He isn’t sure in which way he means it.

The party is nothing like Rio. It isn’t bitter alcohol even sharper on sweet tongue, ghostlike hands joined as they trembled and entwined in spirit; this is a reunion, and an adventure, and an ode, a celebration of Hinata laced in every drink, every Karasuno senior and junior and every other face fortunate enough to have stood the test of time in Hinata’s orbit.

His eyes find Hinata as he is waiting on Ushijima, procuring their drinks (Ushijima’s virgin cocktail, his three straight tequila shots) across the length of the bar. 18,555 kilometers have become however many steps, and this is exponentially more terrifying. Still, he looks on in deadly light, without the single twitch of a muscle. He’d be easy enough to find, Tobio thinks, for anyone who dared, as Tobio always has; he’s standing at corner of the bar with haloes of bodies around him, and one Miya Atsumu at his back, the same pair of arms haunting Tobio for the third time.

::

Suga-senpai cries. He cries a lot. Shouyou realizes the volume only after Atsumu points this out to him, because at some point he’s ceased to be present in this plane of existence and started an elaborate mental commentary on why self-medication is a major proponent of addiction.

“He totally looked a lot scarier in high school.” Atsumu whispers into his ear. His breath smells like heat and alcohol. Shouyou likes that, kind of.

“Weren’t we all?” And there’s some truth to that, you know, the terrifying possibilities contained in youth. Could they have become good, now, if they hadn’t felt great back then? Atsumu snorts.

“You’ve never been scarier to me than in this moment, Shouyou-kun.”

“I’m sitting on you, Atsumu-san.”

“That’s not—” Atsumu flushes. Shouyou loves that, kind of. “I just saw Ushijima getting a cocktail. It looked like a cosmopolitan.”

“You’re right, that’s terrifying.” Atsumu’s head drops a little, just enough to fit into the crook of Shouyou’s shoulder.

“No, you don’t get it.” He coughs. It tickles.

“He’s here for you. They all are. To see you. Don’t you think that’s incredible?”

::

At some point, a few natural things progress at an unnatural pace. Half the Adlers arrive in a cab, boasting one hyperactive Hoshiumi, and then Kodzuken (in his extremely shiny black car) arrives with some representative from the Japanese Volleyball Association.

(“Miya Atsumu, yes? Pleased to make your acquaintance. I’d like to ask you if—”

“Kuro, leave work at the door.”

“But Kenma—”)

Barring Hoshiumi, every new arrival has to be introduced to Atsumu – a lot of “Tettsun, say hello to Tsum-Tsum” and “Atsumu-san, this is Asahi-senpai”– which gets to his head, kind of. It’s not his fault that Karasuno’s coach knew Nekoma’s and Nekoma’s knew Fukurodani’s, and that they all know each other now from that band-aid in first grade or this camp in high school.  It has still managed to become Atsumu’s curse, like most things from Shouyou’s past ultimately have, so far. Kuroo and Bokuto quickly engineer some kind of drinking game, both to facilitate the process of ice breaking and, no doubt, in an attempt to get everyone drunk faster.

“Is Osamu-san going to be here?” Shouyou nudges him in the side. Somehow – Atsumu wants to believe this is intentional – they’ve been squeezed next to each other on a leather sofa they’re sharing with an increasingly more insufferable Bokuto and long-suffering Akaashi.

“Nah, he’s got a train to catch. Shop opens tomorrow at 7AM.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

“He must really have wanted to be there for you.” It’s a nice thing for Shouyou to say. It’s not like he ever really leaves me, Atsumu wants to explain, but then Shouyou probably knows that.

“Yeah. He’s an okay brother, sometimes.”

The difference is: Osamu chose another route, and here they are now, freshly victorious Atsumu bone-tired in a bar, and Osamu headed hurtling away in a bullet train to Tokyo so he can open shop in the morning. Tobio and Shouyou have chosen to walk the same one, to Atsumu's detriment; so, at some point in the night, freshly victorious Shouyou bone-tired in a bar will be meters away from fresh loser Tobio bone-tired in a bar. All they can do is fly in the same spheres, and it’s probably all they want to do, and that’s a gross thought, kind of.

“Tsum-Tsum! Hey, c’mon, pay attention to the game!” In response to this, Atsumu promptly drinks the shot he is due in punishment.

“Damn, that was cool. I wanna do that too.”

“Koutarou, no.”

Atsumu doesn’t have an Akaashi to pry alcohol out of his hands. He does have Shouyou’s back against his chest, rumbling in something Atsumu identifies as a whoop before he reaches forward for a glass and a wedge of lime.

“One more?” A grin.

“You’re cheating, Shouyou-kun, you haven’t had a single one yet.”

“It’s not my fault you’re not paying attention to the game.” Yeah, it is, actually, not that that’s any of your business.

“Fine. I would never say no to you.”

The glasses clink against each other. Atsumu first drinks in the nostalgia on Shouyou’s face, then the alcohol, and then his eyes settle on Tobio's slumped form across the bar.

Dread has always come to Atsumu in the shape of one Kageyama Tobio. 

::

At some point in the night, after Bokuto goes rogue with a vodka bottle, Atsumu leaves to make sure he’s still breathing. The sudden lack of him around Shouyou is a little disastrous. Suga-senpai is still crying. Asahi looks like he is about to vomit. Daichi, who knew exactly what he was doing even when he was whipping a dozen shitty teenagers into shape, looks comically lost.  

“Hinata,” he approaches Shouyou, one of his eyes still firmly glued on Asahi, who he’s momentarily entrusted with Sugawara’s body, “Sorry about that. I think I’m going to take them home now.” He winces at this.

“Thank you for coming, Daichi-san.” Shouyou slurs, but he means it. Daichi nods.

“We’re all very proud of you.” Then, through the warm smile of an older brother – wow, Shouyou thinks, even his smile gives you confidence, what a police officer – he looks around and asks, “Have you seen Kageyama, by the way? We should probably say goodbye to him, too.”

(Here they are, those final minutes before they collide.)

“No.” Shouyou expects he might continue the sentence with a “but,” or an “ah,” or at least round it off to a question. He doesn’t.

::

Shouyou is drunk in a bar in Sendai, and he’s never looked away from Kageyama before. He’s always seen him, even 18,555 kilometers and twelve time zones away. A lifetime away.

I want to see you. How can I see you?

::

“Kageyama.” Tobio knows the voice is Ushijima, but it doesn’t really register. “Wait here while I get the car.” He lays his head against the cool of the couch and closes his eyes.

It is the point of the sun that you see it, even without looking. Hinata swims behind his eyes. When they were young – when he was an awkward mess of limbs and words and emotions, strewn around because Tobio had never known what it was to be put together – twenty had seemed an age forever away, an age at which Tobio thought his whole world would have shifted into place.

The first thought that strikes is, twenty was probably far enough for Hinata. Tobio watches him, sipping bitter cocktails, as he drinks and laughs and lives with strangers. Evven though twenty had seemed forever away from fifteen, he’d still been bizarrely certain forever wasn’t far enough to make strangers of them.

18,555 kilometers, twelve time zones, two years later, Hinata is still connected to every root he’d extended here. Tobio is still swimming in the breeze, stripped of those tiny sprouts he once might have cultivated, and now the wind is threatening departure, too.

His shadow sits next to him. Tobio turns his head.

::

Shouyou is drunk. Where Kageyama sits on the sofa, limp and sickly with sweat, he looks drunker. Seeing him tugs Shouyou’s heart into the ground.

“Kageyama.”

“Hinata.”

Kageyama’s head turns to him, but his eyes remain closed. Maybe that’s easier. Shouyou closes his own, sags back into the couch.

They’ve sat like this a million times, pretended they don’t want to hold hands. The resolve could crumble, today, after they’ve realized they’re at their own whimsy. It could take a word. A touch, and they might fall back into each other, and they might not mind that at all.

Neither of them talk, those first minutes. Then Kageyama sighs, like he’s been relieved of some deadly poison only just recently, and his head arches slightly to lean against Shouyou’s.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.” Silence. Breaking it might dislodge the world off Atlas’ shoulders. Shouyou closes the gap between their hands, instead. It feels a little like forever.

::

(“I’m going to Italy.” He says, eyes closed, trembling.

“When?”

“In the spring.”

“Okay.” There’s some pressure against him. An arm at his back. A hug, probably. “This place was never big enough for us.” Both? Together?

No, Tobio thinks. But wasn't it?

Two hands settle on his knees. Hinata must be kneeling.

“I’m happy for you.” He chokes, but just a little. “Goodbye, Tobio.”

Silence.)

::

Shouyou makes his way over to Atsumu in a motion he can’t quite call walking, but feels a lot like rolling on concrete. He parts the sea of bodies, suddenly remembering the rusty smell of Rio’s beaches. He moves.

How does he make his way to Atsumu, without seeing him at all? The art of looking is like that. Shouyou will never understand. Atsumu probably does.

He’s in Sakusa’s corner, when Shouyou finally touches his shoulder; he looks a little like a mirage, with his eyes closed and neon lights reflecting off his face, as if he's long ascended this plane of reality.

“I think I’d like to leave now.” Atsumu whispers, through gritted teeth and lidded vision.

“Okay.”

Okay.

Shouyou tugs on Atsumu’s sleeve.

Nothing breaks quite like a heart. Atsumu and Tobio learn this at the same time. 

Shouyou’s hands reach for Atsumu as Tobio’s eyes land on him. They collide, for just a blink, but that’s enough.

::

Here’s the thing. There are two types of shadows. There’s the one that follows, and there’s the one that hides. They were a little like that, too.