Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“If love is anything tangible, it is his mouth,

his mouth,

his holy goddamned mouth.

He says my name

and the whole sky is talking.”

— Caitlyn Siehl, Tasting the Moon, 2011 –

– 𖤓 –

December, 2014: Two monsters file down their teeth.

Bruising has four stages.

Hinata, dazed, eyes cloudy and far off in that bird-hit-a-window way, unwillingly displays stage one just under his left eye. Newly broken blood vessels cry out in shades of pink and red, almost masquerading as a blush. The culprit volleyball rolls plainly beside him. Insult to injury.

Contrary to popular belief, not all bruises are purple. Some never cycle past red. Others turn green or yellow. Kageyama, having devoted himself to his craft since as long as he can remember, is familiar with every hue. It’s the price of accomplishment- not knowing proper form, then learning. Moving too fast, then being forced to slow. Fraying his muscles past their limit, then healing.

But that’s besides the point- Kageyama waves a hand over Hinata’s face as if casting a spell, to which he blinks against the harsh gymnasium light, once, twice, groans and tries to prop himself up on his elbows.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Twelve-hundred.”

Well. His sense of humor is still intact, at least.

This mishap is an exception and not the rule: by year three, it’s rare that either of them misses a bump or tumbles headfirst into the sidelines like the excuse of their green beginnings once allowed. But as with all sports: things can, will, and crave to go wrong. Arms grow more defined. Eyes work like crosshairs to sharpen aims into knifelike points. Stakes rise high enough to start making the audience dizzy.

Also, Kageyama’s serves hurt much, much more when taken to the face.

Hinata doesn’t say “help me up,” nor does he need to. His outstretched hand says symphonies. Kageyama takes it without question, his own flesh greeted by the calloused and rough textures of Hinata’s palms and fingertips, before pulling him back to his feet. Hinata springs up, overcompensates and stumbles back. His nose is buzzing with warmth, and the ceiling is still spinning.

On his fingertips is evidence of a nervousness long past; hangnails and picked scabs and pale clumsy little scars from this or that. Kageyama’s seen it enough times to know. Hinata, this epitome of balance, of energy, of strength, was also but fifteen once, vulnerable to all accidents and hasty decisions.

“Ugh. You’re such a jerk.”

Normally, when he says this, Kageyama is unphased: it’s diluted through lips curved into a smile or run over the washboard of a hidden chuckle. Maybe the accusation has rotted with age. He can’t stop his brow from furrowing in response.

“It’s not my fault you couldn’t dig that.”

“Like hell it’s not! Were you aiming at my face or something?”

“No. So you want me to go easier on you, then?”

At this, Hinata has magically regained all senses, all sharpness, now channeling every bit of his cutting gaze right back at his setter.

“I didn't say that.” he tends to the pinkish blotch on his face in lieu of elaborating. Kageyama studies the ridges of his knuckles. They’re robust; his joints, his hands, the points where they connect. Rough and textured in all the right places.

He looks at his own. Lacking any evidence of wear or exertion. Flawless. Unassumable.

It dawns on him the way all insecurities dawn on their holders, creeping from the belly up to the back of the mind. You could not tell, just by looking at his hands, that he has submerged the better majority of his life into the sport that he loves. This demonstrates his mastery at the cost of recognizability.

“Hello?”

Hinata blinks at him, head tilted ever so slightly as though he’s reading each thought that passes through Kageyama’s brain. Maybe he’s overthinking. Maybe he isn’t thinking enough.

“What?”

“I asked if you’re stopping for today.”

The younger him, the younger them, would refuse. They’d play and play until their limbs turned sore from their devotion, until their stomachs rumbled with hunger two-fold and the sky had burned out into a hazy dawn.

Kageyama hems and haws, just to prove that he’s not lost his appetite, before piercing Hinata with his own gaze as best as he can.

Direct eye-contact is both instinctually connective and repulsive: the act of wanting conversation through a non-verbal cue is often so blatant, so uncouthly obvious, and so upfront, that most turn away. Hinata frowns. He does not waver for a second.

“We should. You just took one to the face. Who knows? Maybe you’ve got a concussion.”

“I’m not concussed!” he protests, just for pride. His hands ball into fists at his side to punctuate his point, though, it’s scarcely effective. Kageyama finds himself more distracted than intimidated.

You should bandage that.

“My face?” Hinata asks- it startles his setter, and for a moment, Hinata truly can read minds. The understanding that he must’ve said his thoughts aloud disperses the notion.

“No- forget it.”

Hinata’s brow quirks with confusion, but he saves his questions. The latch of his messenger bag refuses to cooperate until he forces it, weighed down by longer forms, denser textbooks, the weight of the future that he slings over his shoulder. Kageyama does the same. He watches the muscles in Hinata’s hands work in a carefully constructed mechanical harmony, changing his colors from that of skin to red, then white, blood pooling in and away, here and there. His nails aren’t properly trimmed. They aren’t bitten- Kageyama’s seen those jagged edges elsewhere, but they’re uneven and prone to breakage. They’re bothersome.

It’s a little before sundown when they begin the walk back home. They’re more careful now, having to set good examples for the first-years that follow in their footsteps: limiting extra practices to an hour or two, prioritizing meals and rest in place of reckless exertion. Hinata walks his bike longer now, uses it less.

Addendum: Hinata is more careful now. Kageyama had learned the undeniable values of self-preservation years and years ago, courtesy of a diligent teacher. It still feels different to do it now. Unsteady. As though Hinata’s own changing maturity is stirring his own, reaching in and reminding him: your talent is irrelevant. Your stability comes first.

So there are things he hasn’t yet learned, might never learn. Why some nails should ideally be cut in one movement while others require two. Why it’s important to file uneven edges and apply the necessary oils and creams to prevent dry and peeling hands.

How to look, in the span of two palms and ten fingers, as though he is not a volleyball player at all.

“You wanna stop by for a curry bun?”

They linger around the coach's store, the wintry chill biting at their faces and disguising Hinata’s fresh bruise beneath rosy cheeks. It’s the sort of wind that just smells like snow, nevermind that snow didn’t necessarily have a smell, or that maybe they were just smelling frozen over plantlife and damp, ice-encased weeds.

Kageyama senses a temptation stir his stomach- but there’s a better, heartier, fuller meal waiting for him at home. He shakes his head.

Though disheartened, Hinata follows suit. Despite appearances, they both know it’s not out of any dependence on Kageyama’s opinion- rather, that he too understands he’s got a meal waiting for him, and only needs to be reminded.

They walk in relative silence. A small comment here, a mild humming response there. Then nothing again.

He steals glances. Once. Twice. It would take one to two days for the bruise on Hinata’s face to change color, assuming it to be left untouched and un-iced. Maybe he should feel guilty- but that, in itself, is an insult. Hinata would have preferred the barely-there mark on his face to Kageyama going easy on him. Nothing could sting like pity. Nothing.

Which is why he makes it clear that he notices his noticing. He glances back, lifts his brows and stretches his smile as though he’s just been told some good news. Something to entice Kageyama out of the surely-there scowl he has. This wordless dance, punctuated by snow crunching underfoot and the cold light of the incoming year, continues on.

When they reach a crossroads they’ve traversed an uncountable amount of times, the scowl deepens.

“See you tomorrow, Yama-yama.”

That same smile, same wide eyes, stretched, pushed, offered. Maturity chokes. The guise of composure wrings Kageyama’s throat shut.

For six years, he has studied another art: the violent, silent practice of monitoring his greed. He has carved himself down and smoothed himself out until he is focused, precise, something acceptable in its own isolation. Until he’s self-contained.

Today, on this banal walk home, during a standard December in Miyagi, he lets his greed devour.

“You should put some ice on it.”

Hinata blinks. His smile falls- just a little, just enough. “Huh?”

“Your face. You should put some ice on it. Before it turns purple.”

“Oh,” he says. “Oh- yeah, okay. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“And your nails.”

Kageyama reaches out before he can think to stop- takes Hinata’s hand carefully into his own, studying his nails up close.

“...you want me to put ice on my nails?”

“No you dumbass- you need to trim them. The right way. Not whatever the hell you’ve been doing.”

“Not all of us have full routines for our hands, Fussy-Yama.”

“Well maybe you should.”

There’s more bite in the statement than he’d like. Hinata’s smile drops.

“What’s gotten into you today?” he asks, and he means it.

Kageyama is face to face with a living ghost: right now, this December, Hinata is in Miyagi and graduation is still far enough away to be a talk for the future. In no time at all, he’ll be gone. New hunger stirs in Kageyama; the unbearably human urge to leave an imprint of his existence every way he possibly can unto Hinata before he leaves, to teach him all his habits and mar his routine in his own shades. Whatever will let him live on in that burning city on the other side of the world.

He bites his lip. Hinata stares at him incredulously, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-judging, one good jump-serve and stable routine away from god himself.

Is it his fault? For wanting so much? To exist past this moment?

Annoyance- or something deeper- moves him like a puppet on strings, perfect nails digging into strong shoulders. Trembling in a way that only Hinata can notice. The bike falls to the ground, forgotten.

“You need to- work on a lot of things. A lot more.”

Hinata steps back, seizing Kageyama’s wrist in a reverse tug-of-war. Pushing instead of pulling. “The hell- Yama, where is this coming from?”

“Your form on your jump-serve is still off. You go too easy on your eating habits. Your nail-care is shit. You still take serves to the face.”

“Hey, woah, I’m not really appreciating all the sudden feedback on my lifestyle habits? What’s your point here?”

“You still need to improve.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“No,” Kageyama lets go, and the other lets him. “I don’t.”

Hinata sputters like a kicked horse. He’s beginning to understand, finding answers for all his “whys”, and nothing he’s dug up does anything to curb the mounting sensation that there is faith being lost in him. That Kageyama looks where he stands and sees a boy from two years past.

“Well I do. Okay? I’m super-duper aware. Why do you think I’m even planning to leave the country to begin with? For fun? Oh yeah, let me just take a quick hop-skip-and-a-jump to the other side of the world, that sounds like a nice waste of time?”

He turns away. For some reason, Kageyama reaching out has that effect on people. Places. Everything. He can’t understand it.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just saying-”

“No, I know.”

“…”

“I know.”

A beat. The sort of embarrassment that makes Kageyama jealous, the kind that only truly considerate people feel.

“Sorry. It just sort of came out of nowhere, y’know? It just, it feels different when you’re the one telling me that I’m falling behind.”

“I never said that you were falling behind.”

Hinata’s sigh is too exasperated to feel like Kageyama’s done anything good by picking up this topic. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything at all.

“Right, yeah.”

He definitely shouldn’t have said anything at all.

They hold a moment of respectful silence in honor of the amicable mood that lies mangled and dead before them.

“I don’t like this,” Hinata says, point-blank, staring off at some unseeable distance ahead as he picks up his downed bike. Some light dusting of snow has built up on the handle, which he swipes away. The mourning period’s over so fast that it’s almost disrespectful.

“Yeah,” Kageyama nods.

“Not knowing what you’re thinking. What you mean. Sometimes I think we’re on the same page, all synced up, but then you say something and-“

“I shouldn’t have.”

“Shouldn’t have what?”

He looks away. “Said something.”

A predatory pause ensues. Hinata waits for Kageyama to elaborate, or perhaps, he sets up an ambush. The setter can’t tell either situation apart.

“I didn’t want you to forget the ice. It’s important.”

Hinata sort of laughs, then, smile-scoffs in disbelief. “It’s just a bruise.”

He’s not sure why it happens. Why those four words make something dangerous and dark and electrical shoot through limb and mind alike, until he’s clamping his teeth against each other, wrinkling the fabric inside his own pockets. He just knows he hates it. This feeling that Hinata- and only Hinata- seems to have complete control over.

The truth of it is quite simple:

Kageyama is not prepared. He has been prepared his entire life- and now, he is not. No routine or diet or exercise regimen will fix this. No amount of running will keep Hinata in Miyagi after graduation.

“It’s not just a bruise. It’s important. You’re-“

He stops. Hinata waits. This is a cycle that will repeat longer than either of them could ever anticipate.

“Just forget it,” he spits. “Come to my house.”

“Ah- what?”

“Come with me. Just do it.”

Hinata cannot fathom how Kageyama’s managed to butcher a conversation about general first-aid so badly that his only solution is to invite him over, but he does understand, on some level, the importance of this invitation. He cannot let any opportunity pass him by.

“Fine.”

– ☾ –

Grief has five stages.

Kageyama oscillates between stages two and four, a metronome of mourning that never makes it to reprieve. Anger pokes him in flashes as he eyes Hinata’s bruise, darker, redder, shifting eagerly in hue. The Kageyama estate’s bathroom is smaller than it was this morning, his limbs are all the wrong proportions for it, the off-yellow lighting overhead is too bright and the humming of the AC makes him want to punch it dead. Hinata, seated precariously on the edge of the bathtub, tilts his head. Anticipating.

“You didn’t have to call me over for an ice pack.”

“Yes I did,” Kageyama snaps, then reels himself back in- but the damage has already been done. Hinata shrugs.

“I don’t get it.”

“You would forget. You weren’t listening to me. I-“

He chokes the drawstring of the ice-pack so tightly that it zips in protest. The ice rattles crisply inside.

“I hate when you don’t listen to me.”

Clumsily, crudely, Kageyama musters the courage to voice this single statement. Hinata understands that this is not exactly what he means- there are questions left unasked, answers unsaid. He knows this deeply.

Still, he cannot quell his annoyance at how Kageyama’s shadow eats him alive even when he tries to curb his appetite.

“Well A: I was listening, and B: even if I wasn’t, I don’t have to listen to you anyway.”

He kicks the tub with his heel in a bout of sassiness. Kageyama holds the ice pack menacingly, though it never leaves his grasp. Not even when Hinata extends his hand out to use it himself.

Postures stiffen. A nonverbal standoff ensues: Hinata’s demanding palm against Kageyama’s immovable stare. As with most things, Kageyama emerges the victor. His prize is to have Hinata’s eyes carve holes out of his being.

“What’s your point here, Yama? What are you trying to do? I won’t know it till you say it,” the shadows cut across his face in frightening lines. Barely hiding the simmering impatience beneath.

Kageyama keeps the pack close. The bruise only darkens.

“You never learned. After the Kamomedai match- you’re trying, but you’re not doing it, you’re not-“

“Not what?” he chuckles. “Staying in your shadow? Following your every whim? Going full lapdog?”

“Taking care of yourself!”

Oh.

Oh. Hinata’s mind goes blank, his face even blanker. Oh. So that’s what this all is.

Seriously?

He laughs- and it’s a beautiful laugh, an awful laugh. Sweet and horrible, the way it sounds hollow, mocking, like he’s laughing at himself, the absurdity of it all. Like he’s not taking any of this seriously.

“I mean it,” Kageyama cuts through the sugar-sound. Hinata looks up, mouth open, lips curved. There’s still that look of doubt.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Kageyama’s stare could wither rice. Hinata’s mouth remains open, but the corners of his mouth sink downwards.

“You’re not kidding.”

When he speaks again, it is slowly, carefully, the dying remains of his laughter still etched on his face.

“Yama,” he starts, eyes dissecting his every twitch, mouth echoing a lost smile. “I want you to look at me when I say this. We’re volleyball players. Getting a little scuffed is part of the job.”

He knits his brows sympathetically, pitying, as if Kageyama was the crazy one. The stupid one.

“It really is just a bruise. It’ll go away in a few days. Just because I’m not totally freaking out about it doesn’t mean I‘m blowing off my health.”

A flash, a flurry. Ice crackles against the walls of the sink as Kageyama tackles Hinata down, slams him into and against the tub while Hinata reels for his bearings. A deep and guttural rumbling sound boils behind Kageyama’s throat while the two tumble, claw, scratch, push.

“You’re so fucking stubborn!” Kageyama yells, actually yells, his voice echoing off the door and ceiling. Hinata finally grasps a hold of the situation, lets his instinct guide him when he tugs and scratches at Kageyama’s shoulder, brings his knee up from under him to kick him in the gut.

“The hell is your problem?!”

“You would’ve forgotten it- no, you would’ve ignored it! You had that fucking face again!”

He punctuates each point by slamming Hinata against the tub floor. He’s tense, but limp.

“Oh, it’s nothing!”

Thud.

“It’s not a big deal anyway, since I’m the decoy! What good’s a decoy that won’t devote himself a hundred percent?!”

Thud.

“I wouldn’t have gotten bruised if I was good enough, right?! I only got sick because I overdid it, right?! I’ll just fix it later! I’ll just worry about it later!”

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Hinata wheezes out a small breath, his overgrown hair scarcely hiding the too-mild shock in his eyes. Kageyama recoils at the sight alone. Why isn’t he furious? Why isn’t he yelling back? Greedily, hungrily, he does not release Hinata’s shoulders.

“…That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? You and your dumbass brain.”

His voice tapers out. When he looks down, face scrunched in pain, all Hinata wears is that same tepid surprise. As if he’d be disappointed for having his guts spilled out like this, if only he hadn’t known, deep down, that the Kageyama of today will always beat the Hinata of today. That if anyone were to try and scratch at his deepest insecurities, it’d be Kageyama.

It’s always Kageyama.

“You’re not even fighting back,” he whispers. “How…how am I supposed to watch you run off like that when you’re not even doing anything to stop me?”

He murmurs something quiet and painful in response. Kageyama chooses not to hear it.

Hinata pushes half-heartedly against Kageyama’s chest. When he opens his mouth to speak, it becomes clear: his voice is solid and unwavering to make up for his earlier mumble. He doesn’t back away. Not now. Not ever.

“Let go.”

“Make me.”

So he does- shoving Kageyama off of him with more strength than he’d anticipated. The two sit upright in the empty tub, close enough to feel their breaths run hot against each other, teeth glistening in the warm overcast.

They say nothing, too winded, the aftermath of their teenage boyishness expressed in a language without words. After a beat, Hinata readjusts his posture and stands up.

“I don’t really get it,” he admits, looking anywhere but at his setter. “But you’re being really mean.”

Kageyama shrinks in on himself a bit- which he’d told himself he’d never do, despite how he's learned otherwise. Hinata is not Karasuno. He is not as safe as Karasuno, not as forgiving. Or maybe it’s that all his forgiveness feels foreign, sending Kageyama back to old habits.

He’s certain he’s been told this before.

The recollection is so vivid that it basically blinds him. He’s young, and confused, and up past his bedtime, researching questions that are way too big for such a small computer screen which he’s taken from an office with no tenant. He types in with a start: why can’t I make friends? Then graduates to more specific questions.

How to talk to your upperclassman properly?

Greetings to make conversation

Sociability definition

What makes someone dislikable?

Then, when all the answers are too vague, and he’s frustrated, and it’s getting close to two in the morning:

What is wrong with me?

The computer spits back that he is self-centered and arrogant, which stings, purely because it is undeniably true. It says that people are equations. When he finds the right words, and the right order, he will have mastered the problem. He just hasn’t done it yet. But he can try. Again and again and again, he can try, trial-and-error, if only people would let him. When he burns these blue-screen words into his eyes that night, there’s a foreboding sense that this will be a self-fulfilled prophecy. That he will find these links again and again.

Presently, Kageyama keeps his gaze squarely on the porcelain floor.

“Because you’re being reckless.”

“I think you’re looking into it too much,” Hinata soothes. Somehow, he has taken his anger and made it something of a consolation. Placating Kageyama from his own roaring emotions.

“I know you don’t think I can do it,” he amends, stepping out of the tub entirely and gathering his things. “But this is important to me. It’s really simple, too. If I get better, then I’ll be stronger. I’ll have more fun. And I’ll get hurt less.”

He tacks on the last bit like a band-aid, and Kageyama shuts his eyes to drown it out. It doesn’t sound like a truth, so full of unabashed confidence like the Hinata he wants to say goodbye to. It sounds like a promise. Too easy to break.

“You’re already good,” he grumbles. Hinata rubs his shoulder to get the ache out, or to pile on the guilt. Whichever truth Kageyama will think about at night.

“Maybe. But I want to be great.”

“So you're leaving the damn country?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“...”

“I think you can do it,” Kageyama remedies. “I just…want you to be careful.”

Hinata snorts out a laugh. “Yeah, okay. Don’t tackle me next time then.”

“I’m serious.”

His expression softens. “I know.”

Kageyama stands up and out of the tub. He extends the ice pack to Hinata, who accepts, pressing it to his bruised face. The chill is a welcome sensation.

They don’t talk for a very long, very awkward while. Something fragile has just been broken, and neither will speak up, will claim responsibility. This is the quintessence of youth.

Kageyama steals a side-long glance at Hinata, silently begging for him to stay. To be the one constant in an existence where everything he does besides volleyball goes horribly wrong. They’ve matured, improved, and grown, but this is not enough. He will never outgrow his own stunted emotions. He doesn’t think he can watch the only person who could hide that for him go away.

Hinata looks dull. Withered. The bruise peeks out in airbrushed contours past the edges of the cloth, making him paler, weaker. As if being this close to Kageyama and hearing his deepest, dearest thoughts has drained the life out of him.

Maybe Kageyama’s loneliness is contagious. The possibility alone is terrifying.

This too, is ego- the idea that Hinata’s newfound silence, deadly and derived from all the horrible mishaps Kageyama has caused, is solely linked to Kageyama himself. He is filled with dread upon the realization that he and Hinata are no longer on the same page. They are no longer weapons in perfect sync, minute-and-hour hand, fast and faster. He looks at Hinata and sees his hands. Calloused. Crying out in the name of devotion, of hard work. He sees perfection.

Hinata, however, sees a work-in-progress, a player that is not yet great. Maybe not even good enough.

He entertains the possibility that he might never be good enough.

“Can I ask you something?” Kageyama ventures. Hinata nods.

“Do you want to stay over?”

He’s not sure why he says this, just that there’s this feeling. This unforgettable roiling in his gut, the idea that if he lets Hinata go home tonight, alone, he might sit himself down in front of a computer and ask some stupid big questions. The idea that if he goes the easy way and leaves Hinata to his own devices, he might never see him again. It is haunting and ravenous. It licks his bones clean.

Hinata puts the ice pack down momentarily. He looks ahead- at the future, and the door, weighing the power he has in this moment to just shut up and leave. To let Kageyama drown in his own silence.

He nods. The world shakes.

– 𖤓 –

Chapter Text

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a thousand enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you.

But first, they must catch you.”

— Watership Down, Richard Adams, 1972 —

– ☾ –

July, 2014: Sunlight burns spaces in empty ribs.

It’s the very first sleepover of his entire life.

By the time the two of them reach the Hinata estate’s front entrance, he thinks it might be too late to say anything. Hinata hums ahead, the lush grass lapping at his ankles and the house’s looming shadow protecting him from the summer sun.

Kageyama, a meager bag packed with his sleep necessities in hand, trails cumbersomely behind. The house is more traditional than his, older, ricketier, ramshackle in certain places; still, it retains a sense of life and movement that his own does not. He’s nearly jealous until Hinata mentions something about checking for ticks before he enters the genkan.

To live here was more trouble than it’s worth.

“Hurry up, Tired-yama. The sooner we get all this textbook stuff out of the way, the sooner we get to play volleyball!” Hinata nearly sings the last bit, kicking his shoes off and loudly announcing his presence.

Kageyama takes a few mouselike steps forwards, his eyes focused on Hinata’s nape. Looking anywhere else seemed impolite. Impudent. Insistent. This was a private place with a private history; who Hinata was when he wasn’t just Karasuno’s Decoy. The walls he grew up in. Though Kageyama has learned infinite ways to control his fingertips, his hands, and his wrists, he has yet to master the art of delicacy.

“What d’you think?” Hinata whirls around, asking in a voice already more genuine than what Kageyama is used to. His tongue stumbles awkwardly in his mouth, reaching for the right syllables and the right order.

“It’s…nice,” he starts, “smaller than I thought it’d be. Where are your parents?”

“My mom’s out running errands and Natsu’s at a friend’s house. She’ll pick her up on the way back, so you’ll meet them! Though they’ll be running a little late.”

Choosing not to think about that impending horror, Kageyama presses forth.

“What about your dad?” He eyes the family photo, only three figures in sight. Hinata’s mother does not share her son’s red hair, though he does have her eyes. 

“Not around,” he responds, inspecting the entranceway’s cabinets for something unknown. “It’s kind of a long story, and I’m too hungry for that.”

Kageyama’s mind naturally begins to race, but he folds up the topic for later and scoffs all the same.

“Is that all you ever think about?”

“Nope! Sometimes I think about punching you in the gut for being a big ol’ hypocrite”

“A what?”

“Someone who gets mad at me for doing the exact same things he does,” Hinata chides, though the smile doesn’t quite leave his face. “Now hurry up and put your stuff in my room. I wanna eat before I’m ninety, thanks.”

They briefly tussle. It’s par-for-the-course, even in Hinata’s own home. Once the wrestling stops, Hinata guides Kageyama to the sliding-door of his room, opening it with a flourish.

Though his sheets are a mess, the rest of the space is surprisingly tidy: his books are all shelved properly amidst some comics and manga, and his desk has every small and silly charm aligned against the edge. Sports posters and covers are tacked to the wall while his notebooks and other items reside in their proper shelves and drawers. Not a stray shirt or sock in sight. Hinata is absolutely beaming.

“There’s no way it’s this clean normally,” Kageyama states, curt and true.

“Hey! I’ll have you know I’m a very tidy person.”

They exchange the longest look of doubt Hinata's seen from his setter yet. It’s enough to make him cave.

“Okay, yeah. Not usually. But it’s clean while you’re looking at it and that’s what’s important.”

Kageyama sighs and sets his bag down. When did he have time to clean? Was this predetermined? Curiosity eats him up whole as he takes in every detail: Hinata’s room is nothing like his, not even when tidy. His lamp is laced with woven bracelets and bits of string, there are small toys with handwritten notes beneath them and a box full of cards just within arm’s reach. There’s evidence.

Kageyama stares at these gifts, knick-knacks, and mementos while his stomach churns. He tells himself it’s just hunger. That his room’s not really empty in comparison to Hinata’s, it’s just…minimalist. Essential. Perfected.

“Make yourself at home,” comes a distant call from the kitchen, distinctly Hinata in nature as he rattles something metallic around. “I hope you don’t mind leftovers!”

“Yeah,” Kageyama mumbles in response. He stands in the doorway, stiff and silent. He looks around. He listens to the birdsong outside. He wonders if he’s allowed to sit anywhere, or why he cares even if he isn't. This riveting course of wonderances is what leads him, inevitably, to plopping himself down on a bed that isn’t his.

For reasons he’d rather not think about, he finds a great and private comfort in running his hand against the tops of the sheets, listening to them rustle and cave to his insistence.

Maybe, if he does it for long enough, he’ll understand what a home is really supposed to feel like.

It’s funny, really, how a relatively small deviation from his routine has plunged him straight into the pitch-black unknown. How it only took Hinata convincing him that they should take a detour to the park after school to end up staying late enough to call home, inform his sister he was staying the night somewhere else, grab his things on the way, and end up right here.

The bed sort of feels like a swing, if he thinks hard enough and conjures the right memory. When Hinata insisted, despite complaints of childishness, that they should sit on the swings for a while. That was another specialty of Hinata’s: his ability to waste precious, beautiful time with such grace and vibrance that it became a desirable skill.

Kageyama can’t even remember what they talked about- but he does remember the heat of the sun seeping past his skin, immersing him in the distant shrieks of children and couples and families that have all converged here, now, at the perfect time. The soft sleepiness that snuck up on him when normally he’d be running, training, honing himself to a fine point. The cool breeze that carded through his and Hinata’s hair alike, the chains above them squeaking as his heel grazed the overrun dirt beneath.

It was nice. Though he doesn’t regret trading his summer afternoons in parks and playgrounds for practicing the sport he loves with all his heart, it does make him wonder if maybe this was where Hinata got all his, well, Hinata-ness from. Immersion. Wasting time in just the right ways. It’s an art he’ll never understand.

But the smell of an early dinner kills that line of thought instantaneously. By the time plates are even set out, Kageyama’s already stuck his head out into the hallway, approaching the small kitchen table with eager eyes.

“You’re such an animal,” Hinata remarks, amused. “I didn’t even call you over yet.”

“Shut up. You were in a hurry to eat, so get to it already.”

And though it’s probably the most disrespectful thing Kageyama’s said since stepping into the home, it makes Hinata smile something wide and toothy. He’ll never understand it. Kageyama sits down in front of what he assumes to be his seat, a bowl of warm rice already prepared and the smell of reheated okonomiyaki filling his senses. Hinata licks his lips eagerly, and suddenly, dinner isn’t that urgent anymore.

“Let’s eat!”

“Let’s eat.”

Though it’s not fresh, nor the meticulously balanced fare Kageyama would have for himself at home, the food still carries a certain warmth and nourishment. It’s almost nostalgic, the scene at the dinner table: just him and one other. Just some good food after a long day.

Unsurprisingly, Hinata finishes his portion first.

“So,” he gulps down a final mouthful, “did you bring your textbooks and pencils and stuff?”

“Obviously.”

“Great! Then all we have to do is copy down Yachi’s notes and run through the terms again. That should be good. I think.”

Kageyama doesn’t say anything, eyes honed in on where the rim of the water glass meets Hinata’s lips. Hinata parts from it.

“Something wrong?”

“No,” he puts his own cutlery down.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He shoots up, retrieving the plates to place them in the sink despite Hinata’s protests that Kageyama is a guest, and guests shouldn't have to tidy up. He’d rather have the sound of ceramic clinking fill his ears than the numerous worries bubbling to the surface.

With their appetites satisfied, the two of them return to Hinata’s room and set about getting to work. Considering Hinata’s frequent tendency to ramble both off-topic and ad-nauseum, it’s nothing short of a miracle that they manage to have everything done before his family returns, though Kageyama suspects that neither he nor Hinata will retain anything of what they just looked over when it comes down to it. He stares at the terms on the paper, one of them more detached from the source-text on Japan’s isolationist history than the others:

“Treasury: a store or collection of valuable or delightful things; a depository.”

Treasury. He thinks he might have one of his own, buried somewhere in the deep folds of his brain. One where he knew, the moment of, that he would place the park-memory there for as long as he lived. He wonders if Hinata has one, too, if he’d keep anything special or secret there.

“You’re not hungry anymore,” Kageyama states. Hinata glances up, one brow raised.

“...Yeah?”

“So tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“About your dad.”

“Oh!” Hinata stops writing, puts his pencil down and peels his posture away from his notes. “Oh, yeah, okay. I did mention that, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not really that exciting. He had an accident after I was born. The end.”

Kageyama frowns. “That wasn’t a long story at all.”

“I try not to make it one,” Hinata shrugs. “I don’t even know what the accident was. Just one of those things my mom never told me, so I never bothered asking.”

“You don’t miss him or anything?”

“Not really,” he shrugs again, just as steady and stable as he’d always been. Some unseen part of him betrays all this detachment: it screams that this is important, even if he doesn’t realize it yet. That Kageyama will never quite forget this about him. “I never really met him, so there’s not much to miss. My mom has always covered all our bases.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

Hinata smiles, effortlessly, waving his hands as though to swat the topic away. “Oh don’t be, it’s really not that sad or anything!”

Kageyama wants to say something, but seeing how the conversation has been flowing so far, he favors the idea of keeping his mouth shut.

So far, at the very first sleepover of his entire life, he’s learned two things:

Hinata was a very bright person. Not necessarily in intelligence, but in his behavior, his habits. They’d fill the air with his own strange brilliance. Second: Hinata was crafty. He would make-do with anything given to him and find ways to be proud of it. This applies to volleyball, families, and Kageyama assumes the rest of his mortal existence as well.

Kageyama begins to suspect things. He begins to suspect that when Hinata’s mother checks in on them, he will realize that his family might be abnormal. Or that Hinata’s might be abnormal. Or that neither of them will ever really know, because they don’t have ones of their own, so they couldn’t possibly understand why adults acted the way they did.

He might turn his hunch into an insecurity.

But in the meantime- the sliding door flings open and little footsteps storm down the hall.

“We’re hoooome!”

Right, Kageyama reminds himself. Hinata has a sister. Like me.

“Natsu, what did I tell you about yelling?” what Kageyama can only assume to be Hinata’s mother sighs, carrying the weight of a constant reminder in a house full of megaphones-turned-children. It sounds a strange kind of upset. It sounds full of something, some mix of emotions. It sounds real.

Hinata turns his head to the hallway, his expression drooping like leaves after rain.

“Shoot- if they’re back already, that means it’s dark out. Darn. I really wanted to play some more.”

“We still can,” Kageyama says feverishly. It’s a little too much, too early. He makes a mental note to kick himself extra hard for that one.

Hinata smiles, as though he knows something Kageyama doesn’t, then shakes his head. “Nah. It’d be nice, but there’s boars outside around this time. I ran into one once. Did I ever tell you that?”

“No.”

“It was pretty scary. Not- not actually though! Just like, when you spot a spider in the bathroom or something. It’s more…”

He snaps his fingers, searching aimlessly for the word.

“Unexpected?”

“Yeah!” Another toothy grin. “Unexpected. It was huge.”

Kageyama says nothing. Up in his mind, he is rearranging the stars and replacing the moon like a bad light bulb. He is turning back time to try and find ways, still, to practice. To play. Hinata lets the silence linger, knowing, surely, that it’d soon be filled.

“Hinata? Are you home?”

“Yeah!” he calls back, scrambling to poke his head out through the door.

“Can you help me carry these?”

“Sure! Kageyama can say hi, too!”

Here we go, the needling part of Kageyama’s inner monologue grunts out. The part where I royally fuck up.

Kageyama watches them reunite from a safe distance. This isn’t his scene to intrude on, and still, Natsu eyes him up and down, trying to make sense of the behemoth that’s just spawned into her home.

So they exchange polite greetings, in which Kageyama is eternally grateful he can keep his responses to a bow and a nod, not needing to explain himself any further when Hinata’s already so eager to introduce him. He thinks he might be paranoid. Something about the way Natsu keeps staring at him, maybe, searching for faults. He thanks them for their hospitality, and his mother thanks him back for his patience.

“I hope Shoyo hasn’t been bothering you any,” she remarks, lightly, but wary nonetheless. 

“No, not at all.”

Biggest lie of his entire life. Oh well. It might be worth it to see Hinata’s pleasant surprise, eyes wide and brows lifted.

Natsu circles around Kageyama like a shark. Can little kids smell blood? Was he bleeding any?

“Teammates, huh…” she murmurs. “How old are you?”

“I turn seventeen in December.”

Her eyes alight with shock and disbelief. Has he said something wrong?

“You’re younger than my brother?!”

He nods stiffly.

“But you’re so tall? Are your parents tall?”

“Somewhat.”

“Are you sleeping over?”

“…yes.”

“Are you good at jumping?”

“Sort…of?”

“Natsu, leave him alone! This isn’t twenty questions!” Hinata, in an act of saving grace, tells his sister off from around the kitchen corner. Kageyama’s never been more thankful.

Though reluctant, she eventually peels away from him, trotting off to accompany her mother. Kageyama’s conclusion:

He could never fit in here.

Hinata must notice his revelation, for he finishes helping his mother and stares at his companion with an unreadable expression. Then, in a voice quieter than he could’ve ever anticipated:

“You look overwhelmed.”

“Kind of.” Kageyama bites his tongue. “I mean- no, it’s fine.”

“Do you wanna take a shower to cool off?”

For a split-second, he misunderstands entirely. His heart skips several beats. The stars stop to listen. Higher-thinking finally graces his alarmingly empty mind, and with it, the usual ensemble of muddled thoughts, guilt, and self-attrition.

“Okay.”

And so he does, and Hinata follows. They both wind up right back in his room, sitting against his bed, going through magazines and comics while Hinata talks his ear off over a plate of fruit.

Kageyama is only sixteen. Despite this, when he rests his heavy head on his arms and turns it to Hinata’s direction, the smell of soap and damp hair filling his nose and his mouth still sweet with cherries, he knows he will love him for the rest of his life. He knows this is the single most terrifying thing that could ever happen to him.

His feelings might be like cavities, a sign of negligence, of rotting, of messing everything up. He’s seeing too much of him to know.

“I still have to get through this one,” Hinata points to a series Kageyama tries to remember, but fails. “New editions are way too expensive, so I’m waiting until all the chapters are out. Have you read it?”

“No.”

Hinata puts his comic down. “Have you ever read stuff like this?”

“Not really,” Kageyama turns his head away, admitting it quietly. “I just used that free time to play volleyball.”

Hinata is quiet for a scarily brief, still intensive moment. The clock ticks somewhere far off in the building.

“That’s cool. You got lots of practice.”

“Yeah.”

“Was it fun?”

“Yeah.”

“Who’d you practice with?”

“Myself.”

“Oh.”

A brief of recognition. They might not realize it, will never call it by name, but they have both known this loneliness intimately. This sudden shared proximity will not offset it. The resulting quiet seeps through the air, just until Kageyama feels a sharp jab to his shoulder.

“What?” He whirls his head around.

“You weren’t looking at me. I thought you fell asleep.”

Kageyama averts his eyes again. He’s not sure why: they’re both dressed modestly, and neither has particularly embarrassing sleepwear or habits, no cheesy stuffed animals or complaints about the temperature. It’s still too much, too much he’s seeing, and learning, all these little facts: Hinata does this. Hinata does that. He likes this. He doesn’t like that. He sleeps with the lights off, but has an old nightlight. He kicks and turns. He used to sleeptalk. Remember all of this. Remember.

“No. Just tired.”

“You’re acting kinda weird,” Hinata observes, cutting as always. Kageyama shrugs one shoulder. Maybe this learned gesture will save him.

“I’m not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No, like, you sound sorta distant. And a little sad. Sorry- did I bring up a bad topic?” Hinata pushes, prodding, digging his proverbial nails into every nook and cranny of Kageyama’s being until he finds what he’s hiding, what he’s holding dear. What’ll he think when he discovers it? When he carves out his center just to find his own eyes staring back?

“No,” Kageyama snaps shut. “I always sound like this.”

Hinata blinks. His mouth draws into a sharp line.

“I’m your partner, Yama. I can tell when you’re off your game.”

“Off my game in what? Sleepovers?”

“I mean, when you have stuff on your mind. You know you can tell me, right?” Hinata readjusts his posture, sits criss-cross facing his setter expectantly. “That’s pretty standard sleepover stuff. Baring your soul or whatever in the dead of night.”

“It’s only nine o’clock.”

“Okay, in the…uh…birth of night? I don’t know. You get my point.”

“I’m not baring my soul,” Kageyama scoffs. “That sounds stupid.” And there’s nothing to bare that wouldn’t destroy everything as we know it.

Hinata sighs something overly exaggerated, but relents. In his defeat he sets about putting away his scattered comics and manga. It’s too early to go to bed by sleepover standards- but by Kageyama standards, it’s never too early to be early. Hinata drags the guest futon out from where it’s been rolled in his closet, and the first thing Kageyama knows is that it, the room, all of it, smells like him.

It’s not unpleasant, nor necessarily good. Just overwhelmingly Hinata.

“Floor, or bed?”

Kageyama looks at him incredulously. “Floor. I’m not sleeping in your bed. That’s weird.”

“I was just offering, jeez. You don’t need to get so riled up about it. And what’s wrong with my bed anyway?”

“Nothing. It’s yours.”

Hinata shakes his head a little, just to himself. He’s yet to understand Kageyama in a way that can only be achieved when they’re at the top together, has yet to break down each of his repressed half-gestures into something of meaning. In this case, all he concludes is that Kageyama prefers to sleep on the floor. He does not understand the wanting behind it.

They settle in. The lights go out. The world goes dark.

Silence. Beautiful silence. The countryside is gentle and soothing, the grass in the wind, the summer crickets replacing the cicadas in their chorus. It’s nearly quiet enough to hear the stars twinkle.

But Kageyama can’t sleep.

He tosses and turns. He counts sheep. He closes his eyes for what feels like an eternity. It doesn’t work. Above him, Hinata is stirring too.

Maybe it’s just the effects of having his very first sleepover. Maybe something dark and twisted and self-sabotaging managed to wriggle to the surface of his psyche when he wasn’t looking. Maybe he’s just stupid. He doesn’t know when he takes the risk of speaking into the void:

“…are you awake?”

Silence. Shuffling. Then:

“Yeah.”

And though he knows that some part of Hinata must be cataloging this moment as a win, jotting down and replaying Kageyama’s earlier protests, the heat of the moment forces him to continue.

“I can’t sleep.”

“I know. I heard.”

“Too many thoughts.”

In the dark, Hinata sits up. Kageyama can barely make out the silhouette of his wild hair from the light of the sliding-door.

“Like what?”

“…it’s stupid.”

“Just say it,” Hinata goads. Kageyama falls, hook, line, and sinker.

When he parts his lips, the words don’t want to go out. They’re his last shred of dignity. His last proof to himself that he does have self control, that he’s disciplined, that he can get through this ordeal without risking any of his insides at all. The fact that they come out anyway will haunt him for the rest of his life.

“Do you think I’m…mean?”

Hinata goes very, very quiet. This is clearly not the sort of question he was expecting to hear, and his expression is unreadable in the dark. He lies back down, both of them facing the same ceiling in different places.

“Mean how? Like as a person? Or sometimes?”

“I don’t know. In general.”

Another very dark, very uncertain, very long silence ensues. The anonymity of nighttime has its own intimacy to it.

“Then yeah, I guess,” Hinata puts out, voice light and fluttery, an odd kind of delicate. “You can be pretty mean. And vulgar. And bossy”

“Oh.” The sheets are pulled up further until they curl around Kageyama like a shell, protecting him by some logic eight years past, this idea that nothing can get him while he’s hiding this way. Not even himself.

“But I think that’s just your default setting. You’re probably just used to it, being kinda mean. But it’s not actually you.”

“Yeah,” Kageyama grumbles. “Maybe.”

“You’ve come a really long way. You’re not as scary as you were in your first year.”

“I was scary?”

Hinata goes quiet again. Each question is getting more absurd and tactless than the previous, and it finally hits home that this is something sensitive, and quiet, and one-in-a-million. He takes his time.

“A little.”

“…”

“Yeah. Just a little.”

“How?”

“It’s not like- you never really scared anybody.” Hinata stumbles, trips over his own honesty and babbles like a brook.

“I was never scared. I guess I’d just be caught off guard, like, sometimes you’d say something, or act a certain way, and I’d get kind of nervous that you were going to be like that forever. All pointy and spiky and brooding. But you wouldn’t explain what was wrong, so I couldn’t…know? Augh. Urgh! I dunno. I’m not makin’ any sense.”

He sighs, closes his eyes for a minute and presses his palms to his sockets. Then, when he’s ready, and his arms are down, he starts over:

“You were quieter. Harder to read. It’s better now.”

Kageyama is corpse-silent.

Maybe he’s begun to doze off. Hinata makes himself comfortable, puffs up his blanket and tries to settle beneath it even if he knows it’ll be kicked off by morning.

It’s too quiet, abruptly, like the noise took something with it when it left. Turning the space-between from serene to stiff.

Did he actually fall asleep?

When he peers his head curiously over the side of his bed, Kageyama is sitting up. From the darkened ridges of his face, he can just barely make out that Kageyama is staring at him, eyes wide, sleepless. He stares back.

Somehow, he knows exactly what expression Kageyama is wearing. Somehow, it hurts.

“Is there something wrong with me?”

“What?” Hinata bites, loud, abandoning the safety of whispering.

“You- you said you “read” me…when you do that, does anything stick out? Is it obvious?”

“Is what obvious??”

“That there’s something wrong with me.”

“...”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you,” Hinata says each word with utmost solidity: he will not allow for any space to think otherwise- but he understands, similarly, that he’s only sixteen. He can’t know everything.

“Do you mean it?”

Kageyama leans in, grasping the edges of the mattress cover while Hinata looks down at him. From this perspective, he is small, obscure, unknown. Darker than he ever will be. Hinata reaches over, quietly, carefully, and flicks on his nightlight.

They see all of each other in the weak, warm, battery-powered glow. Hinata’s eyes dig holes into Kageyama’s skull.

“I mean it.”

And maybe it’s a lie. Maybe, months apart, then years, then continents, he will realize that there’s something deeply wrong with the both of them, and it’s a sort of wrong that he can’t see or touch or understand but can taste, can savor, can rearrange his entire life around having it again in locker rooms and apartments and the poorly lit mirrors of restaurant-bathrooms that take him back to this exact moment.

Kageyama looks unfocused, away. His hand releases the mattress cover.

By now, Hinata has individually labeled and filed every one of Kageyama’s subtle expressions into his mind. A slight quirk of his mouth for pride, a brow furrowed for concentration, hands curled with anger, anything and everything. But when Kageyama finally meets his eyes, he wears something new. Something Hinata has definitely heard of, possessed, even, but can’t understand yet. It is silent and powerful. It fades the more he stares.

“I’m going to bed,” Kageyama says with a voice as dry as timber, the sobriety of context snapping him back into the habit of self-restraint. He turns his back to the light, and to Hinata.

“Oh. 'Kay.”

The next morning, everything is right where it should be, and the sensitive, soft-eyed Kageyama is dead and buried. A figment of a dream. Something invented by a bored mind.

Hinata almost misses him.

– 𖤓 –

February, 2013: A setter-to-setter meeting, repeated.

A prelude: Once, not too many years ago, Kageyama was small, and wide-eyed, and untainted by any perceptions of human cruelty. On a crisp February afternoon, for reasons he will never understand, his grandfather had taken him by the hand and led him to the nearby mountain shrine for prayer.

Kageyama, aged seven, knew what prayers were and how to do them. He understood their process and importance. He accepted these things as fact. It was the converse that he doubted: the idea that without these prayers, bells, and slips of paper, demons would pour back into the world and cause unrelenting havoc. Monsters were real- and they didn’t have horns, or tails, or intentions to kidnap children like him. They commanded courts and found ways to turn their heavy land-locked bodies into weightless forms. They flew.

“Yōkai aren’t those sorts of demons,” Kazuyo begins, hands put together, patient and all-knowing through the eyes of youth. “They’re invited. The best way to keep them out is to never give them an opportunity.”

“Invited how?” Kageyama tilts his head, a five-yen coin in his own hand. No walking umbrellas or kappas had ever showed up on his doorstep, and he couldn’t understand how anyone in their right mind would want one for company. Kazuyo smiles, carding a hand through his grandson’s hair. It’s a lighter pressure than it was last month, but he’s too young to notice.

“When you think bad things, or fail to keep your mind and body strong, they’ll notice. They creep in to make it worse…maybe you start losing small items, or you’re suddenly upset, and you don’t know why.”

He snaps his fingers. Kageyama startles.

“That’s when they get you. From the inside out.”

Kageyama holds his stomach. All of it sounds very unpleasant, and worse- not volleyball related. He’s not certain he understands what moral his grandfather is trying to give him.

“So what’s the point of praying?”

Kazuyo laughs, and though it stumbles on the way out, it is a laugh nonetheless.

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to have the gods looking out for you, too.”

That day, Kageyama directs a prayer directly to the head sun goddess herself. He asks her, pretty please, not to let anything get him from the inside out.

He could not have known to pray for anyone else.

Towards the end of their first year, Kageyama runs away.

The whole scenario starts innocently. It always does. The lingering January cold ripples throughout the school and neighborhood alike, causing sniffles, coughing fits, chills, and fevers. Kids began wearing masks to school and posters advocating the benefits of hand-washing found their ways back onto chalkboards.

Amidst this quiet management of a yearly misfortune, Hinata sets himself aflame. The recent loss to Kamomedai: lighter fuel.

Bit by bit his craving for betterment chipped away all the plain softness of effort or determination, leaving the steel-sharp realization that just trying his best wouldn’t be enough. It spreads worse than any virus or germ. An extra hour of practice became two. Two into three. A bike-ride of forty minutes into twenty-five, not counting breaks.

Constant.

While the third-years relent themselves to cram-studying for finals and determining their futures, the gymnasium becomes Hinata’s own terrarium. His spike rings like a gunshot across the room, kinetic energy launching a little leather ball hard enough that it has the capability for murder. It’s out. Again.

Today, eyes are on him. Kageyama’s, for one, piercing in their intensity, threatening to slice him in half if he meets them back.

They are only first years, but Kageyama has already seen the roiling beast of insecurity that dances under Hinata’s skin, making a playground of his ribs. It is not loud, nor obvious, nor physical, and it will not stop Hinata from smiling, but he’s seen it nonetheless. It resides in the shadowy corners of his eyes and lips. It sneaks into his language, his habits, his everything. It is planning— though it hasn’t done it yet— to eat Hinata alive.

If he listens very closely, he can hear the cutlery scraping.

“One more,” Hinata breathes, jagged, starving. Nearly inhuman.

Kageyama holds the ball close to his chest. Hinata is in peak physical condition: his jumps reach their maximum point, his reflexes are sharp, and his thinking is quick. It’s so near-perfect that he can only wonder what he’s running from with all this hail-mary stamina.

“No.”

Hinata snaps up. He’s had enough time to catch his waning breath.

“What?”

“I said no. You’re tired, and it’s getting late.”

“I’m fine,” he begins, before realizing that those words in that order almost always convey the opposite, and even Kageyama wasn’t dense enough to let that slide.

“I’m not tired at all, ‘Yama, and I know you aren’t either. Toss me another.”

“I won’t."

“No, you don’t get it-” he stops, amends, weaves his words in a way that’ll get just what he wants. “I literally feel great. Better than usual. Cutting practice off here would be such a waste!”

Kageyama doesn’t budge. He’s never been superstitious- but that does not stop the thought from passing through his head: maybe Hinata’s been gotten from the inside out. Maybe he doesn’t know the right prayer for that.

“Just one more?” Hinata switches tactics. “Let’s end it on a good note.”

“I’m ending it now. It’ll be dark soon, anyway.”

“Just one!”

“No.”

“One!”

“No!”

His voice resounds louder than he’d like, but Hinata doesn’t back away. He doesn’t even flinch.

Deep in the very furthest corner of Hinata’s mind, there is a singular comment nailed like a crucifix through his skull. Fraying his optic nerve until all he can see is a brightly lit hallway, mundane in all but its occupants, staring him down at a rare eye-level. How Coach Washijō had not been particularly angry, or disappointed, or interested at all when he’d torn down his still-budding sense of accomplishment:

Without that setter, I can’t say I see any worth in you at all.

Though the memory itself has lost most of its bite, the mark remains: Hinata knows, irrevocably, all-encompassingly, that he is not as good as his setter. He hasn’t put in the same time investment, lacks the same innate game sense, didn’t have enough opportunities, whatever excuse-dressed-up-truth feels right to hide behind. In the coming month, he will lose the patches that his upperclassman formed to hide this fact for him. He will lose all his safety nets and margins of error with nobody to blame but himself.

He will lose.

One month is four weeks, four weeks only thirty (now closer to twenty) days, twenty days only four hundred and eighty hours. Not enough time, not fast enough, not at his current pace. So he speeds up. Practices better. Hits harder. Runs faster.

The way Kageyama stares at him makes the source of his opposition clear, but not palatable. Hinata is tempted to delude himself with a paradox: the fever was not his fault, so he should be allowed the right to push his limits, earn a real fever. To burn himself out until he’s nothing but charcoal. Of course his shoulder angel will argue the benefits of resting well and caring for himself, how it’s unlike him to forget the importance of Takeda-sensei’s words, but from where he’s standing rest is a luxury reserved exclusively for the monstrously talented.

Rest is for those already ahead. Infuriatingly, they never take it, never stop, never idle. So why should he?

“I-” Hinata begins. He needs, but need meant reliance, and reliance meant weakness, and weakness meant losing a match. “I want you to toss for me.”

Defiantly, Kageyama moves to return the ball to its nearby cart.

“For? Not to?”

Hinata interferes, blocking him, stalling him, whatever will keep the source of his current misery in the same room.

“For.”

Kageyama looks into a face he’s convinced himself he’d recognize in every contorted emotion. Hinata’s eyes, specifically, are easy to get lost in- but nobody ever talks about how easy it is to drown, terribly, in someone else. To be snapped up by the uncaring abyss until his lungs burst. It’s dark, unwelcome, grabbing and tearing. It’s not the hitter he knows.

“You’re acting weird.” When Kageyama speaks again, it is slow and deliberate. It is a death sentence.

Hinata’s nose scrunches. He seizes the ball with greedy hands, pushes it back into Kageyama’s chest.

“I’m not. I can handle this.”

“You can’t.”

“Yes,” he grits out, “I can. If you won’t toss for me, I’ll just find someone else.”

And he has to believe that he can. If he doesn’t: the world stops spinning, the stars burn out, every possible catastrophe is set in motion and every baby on earth will cry. Something devastating will happen. Something that proves why he wasn’t invited to youth camp, why the small spark of athleticism he has is so unbelievably microscopic in the grand scheme of things, why he’s only just started and is already failing. It’s as if the thin veneer of his self-assurance is all that’s separating him from revealing a rotting secret:

Hinata Shoyo is talented, but not talented enough. He is passionate, but not passionate enough. He is determined, loud, a quick learner, a quick lover, and he is everything in the world except what he needs to be.

“Is this about the match?” The question shoots out. It’s almost panicked when he says it, disbelieving; Kageyama has never been replaced by Hinata, and the statement poses more as a threat cresting the horizon than a condolence. A very small, very raw, very demented part of him hopes Hinata will never find someone else.

“What match?”

“Our last one. When you fell.”

“I didn’t fall.”

Kageyama frowns. This was worse than expected.

“Whatever you did. It was your best.”

“Don’t,” Hinata snaps, quickly, sharply. “Don’t say that. That wasn’t my best. I can do better.”

He shoves Kageyama back with the ball still caught in a joust between them. Unapologetic. A tremble moves through each gangly limb as he casts his gaze down, towards the floor, towards the only thing in this building that will not remind him of his growing incompetence.

Several sentences sit on the tip of Kageyama’s tongue like little machine guns, words that could tear people apart if he let them out. He’s swallowed them down time and time again, but they always, always crawl back up, always sit one perilously heated debate away from ruining everything.

The stakes are different. Today, Hinata knows exactly what’ll come out of his mouth next. That no matter how badly he wished it wasn’t true, that meager row of three official matches was his absolute limit. Even worse: he’d be consoled, and pitied, and coddled, and told how much of a feat it was that he’d managed to endure them all, nevermind that his teammates had persisted through further with not a fever in sight.

Nevermind that it was only because of his wonderful, horrible, apocalyptic setter. The one about to tear him apart at this very moment.

This was the curse placed on Kageyama by his own devious thirteen-year-old mind: he’d say things exactly as they were and somehow still manage to hurt people. He will not break it until two entire years go by.

“I’m going home.” His bag shuffles dimly as he slings it around his shoulder, feigning nonchalance and finality.

“I’ll find someone else,” Hinata warns. Kageyama rips his attention away.

“Find someone else then.”

The gym door slides open. Kageyama does not dare to look back, to see the grim look on Hinata’s face. In a moment of sheer blinding cowardice, he leaves his hitter to be devoured by his own intentions, an ouroboros of teenage volleyball and inferiority complexes. He will return to find bones picked clean, polished and sharp enough for him to choke on, for them to lodge into his throat long enough to fester. He will regret this decision for a private eternity.

Hinata, alone and famished, retrieves another ball. His serving needed work, and he will not be satisfied until he’s sunken his teeth into every single speck of progress. Until he’s burned himself bright enough to vaporize Kageyama’s shadow.

Kageyama thinks of daisies on the walk home.

One time, when he was very little, and his sister was very bored, she’d taken an unbloomed daisy from the kitchen vase to press it. In an attempt to force it open, she’d peeled, squeezed, pinched, and surgically pried apart every tightly closed petal until finally, with enough brutalization, the poor thing opened up in gorgeous colors of white and yellow.

Like a little magic trick, she’d said.

But by the time Kageyama had returned with her desired book, petals were scattered on the floor, leaving only a stem and a pollenless center. Miwa’s distress earned her no explanation. Perhaps, if it’d been left to open on its own time, in its own conditions, it’d be the longest living daisy to ever grace a kitchen table. It’d be a miracle. For a brief time, it was just that- it’d opened, it’d worked. Brutality worked.

He doesn’t want to see Hinata in scattered pieces across the floor.

Occasionally, Kageyama hears a whisper in his ear that there is something deeply wrong with him. Exhibit A: the mental picture that graces his mind of Hinata worn to the bone, sleepless, primal, all glowing red eyes and sharp teeth to tear apart anything that stood in his way. The kind of monster that just begged for a sprain or a tear or a contusion. Any injury that showed proof of his efforts.

Sure, I’ll be better someday. I’ll be great at receiving and serving someday. I’ll be a real player someday. But I want to be something now.

He’s never said this, never even admitted to it, but Kageyama inexplicably knows this the same way he knows when Hinata wants a regular quick, a higher set, a first tempo instead of a minus. It screams into him. Now. Now. Everything has to happen now.

Amidst all of this, he makes it home. The key clicks delicately inside the lock of his front door and Kageyama shuffles inside, quiet despite the lack of tenants by virtue of a force of habit. Some days the solitude is his friend- on days like this, it churns the air heavy, makes the clock-tick sound louder than it really is. He heats up some leftovers and attempts, briefly, to do some homework. To look outside the window. To give up and watch some matches. Whatever will keep his attention dancing around the elephant he’s abandoned.

He tries to study. He tries to eat. He tries to occupy. What time was it now? Had Hinata eaten dinner yet?

For something that ultimately wasn’t his business, every worst case Hinata-related-scenario seeped vividly into an idle mind. He shakes his head and tosses to himself more out of muscle memory than any true effort to practice, if only to feel the weight of the ball against his fingertips. Familiarity was good.

But the restlessness grows and pollutes the air, the chores, the television, everything including the comfort of his own empty home. It possesses him to take out his phone and write a very stupid message, make a very stupid call.

The phone rings. And rings. And rings. And rings. The clock ticks. And ticks. And ticks.

Click.

“What do you want?”

Kageyama did not think this through. This realization would have been significantly more helpful if it had occurred before he hit the call button.

“Um. Oikawa-san. I have…a question.”

“And?”

His voice shrinks. “I have a question for you specifically. It’s about- about volleyball. Setting.”

“...Setting. Right. Well I’m pretty busy, so-”

“Please.”

Wherever Oikawa currently is, the request gets him to move, to call to attention. Kageyama can hear something rustling in the background.

“Why don’t you ever ask your own third-years anything? Are they too busy working to keep up with me?”

“You…know more.”

“I know more,” Oikawa carefully repeats. “Sure. Okay. Make it quick.”

“If-”

“Oh, and don’t expect me to teach you anything technical over the phone. Not that I’d teach you anything in person, either.”

“...Yes. Okay. So, it’s the…the last set of the match. And it’s down to match point. If- if you tossed to Iwaizumi-san, and he spiked it better than he’s spiked anything before, and it went out and you all lost, you-”

“Spit it out.” The phone crackles. “I can feel myself turning into an old man.”

Kageyama swallows thickly. Words will never be his medium, even if he fills journal after journal with them. He thinks with every brain cell he can muster, thinks until his head hurts, arranges sentences and cuts them down and builds them again.

“Hello?”

“How do you- stop someone who doesn’t want to?”

Oikawa is still.

Kageyama does not know this, has no way of knowing this, but Oikawa is currently fiddling with his headphone wires, safe in the comfort of his own room, entirely unoccupied by anything outside of this phone call. He is not needed on any court- not now, and is working tirelessly to fix that.

In a cruel twist of fate, he takes what should have been Hinata’s place in terms of telepathy- partly because he has played the part of a monster for a very long time, and partly because Kageyama’s shadow is devastatingly infectious. He runs the words over in his mind and overlays them, perfectly, into his own understanding.

“Let me guess: Shrimpy isn’t cooperating.”

“You- how, wait, how did you-”

“Oh for fuck’s sake Tobio, you think I don’t remember the first time you pulled this sad-weary-maiden-at-my-doorstep act? Asking for my help out of the blue? Of course this is Hinata-related. It always is.”

Kageyama says nothing. The silence speaks volumes.

“So he’s not cooperating. Restless after a bad match. And you care why?”

“Well- he’s being reckless.”

An audible laugh bounces around the walls of Kageyama’s room.

“Woah, talk about breaking news. What’s next? You saw a fork in the kitchen?”

“I’m serious. He won’t stop. He won’t rest. He fucking knows that it’s bad, and a step backwards, and he’s doing it anyway. How do I get him to stop?”

Oikawa brings the phone up to his face, makes sure his diction is clear and precise, a spear of truth to impale his junior’s thick skull.

“You don’t.”

“What?”

“You can’t. This might surprise you, Tobio, considering you’ve had a silver volleyball spoon in your mouth from the moment you were born, but not everybody can sit contently knowing that they’re enough as-is. So he’s overworking himself? Let him. It’s what he wants. You can’t interfere with that even if you tried.”

And Oikawa knows that the bite he’s put into the silver spoon statement is unfounded, knows that Kageyama is disagreeing with him before he even gets the full sentence out. Kageyama has worked hard. Kageyama could, theoretically, find ways to force things to his liking, do something ridiculous like lock Hinata out of the gym or place him on house arrest.

But he also knows that he’s been ravenous like Hinata before, and that in some part, he still is. This was the obsession placed unto the nearly-talented:

Stop, and you die.

So they turn the act of running into lifeblood.

“But- if he gets injured-”

“Then he gets injured. Believe me, he knows what he’s doing is stupid and counterproductive. Knowing just won’t stop him. Let him get it out of his system.”

“So it will go out of his system? Eventually?”

“What am I, your pocket-therapist? A fortune-teller? You’ll just have to wait and see.”

The line goes quiet. Oikawa takes a very short, very well-deserved breath, something that might’ve been born a sigh before growing into a huff.

“You know, Tobio, for someone who’s played a truly disgusting amount of volleyball, you always forget how frustrating it can be to lose.”

“...I don’t.”

“Hm.”

The phone clicks. The call ends. The line beeps.

Kageyama runs a hand through his hair. If he could read the future, he could see that it’s not the fault of a demon or a yōkai, that it’s just the restlessness of appetite. That Hinata cannot, no matter how much Kageyama prays, begs, thinks, or yells otherwise- stay here. Hinata has to run. He has to run very far. Further than he could ever imagine, and it’ll hurt, seeing him go so far away until he’s a tiny invisible speck, but it will heal him, give the hunger that possesses him something to gnaw on.

But he can’t read the future. And he can’t find his words. And he can’t think.

Today, and into the next week, Hinata will continue to burn, and Kageyama will continue to flee. Though an episode of this intensity will not chase them into their ascension as second-years, it will bear a mark on the setter, tinting his memories through various Interhigh matches and V-League considerations until he is irreparably reminded that Hinata might always have this thing inside him, this little seed of monstrous instability.

One day, if he’s very lucky, and very careful, he might get close enough to rip it out.

He just hopes he’ll be delicate enough when the time comes.

– ☾ –

Chapter Text

“If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it.

Why not?

It has you.

There is no escape.

What a cruel and terrible thing escape would be

if escape were possible”

— Parable of The Talents, Octavia E. Butler, 1998 —

– 𖤓 –

April, 2018: Love: self-medication, satiation.

S: 0:0

He’s learned many things about hunger.

It’s a weakness and an opening. It’s a biological facet of existence. It’s the origin of all greed. It’s what makes him better than everyone else.

And until a few years ago, he shared it, the same way he shared his name, his face, his vulnerabilities, and his wants. The typical sacrifices that came with being a twin.

He wonders every now and then if the regret is seeping in yet, the way a coyote circles a chicken coop. If maybe Osamu finally woke up one morning and realized that he made a pretty stupid decision, and that he’d broken off from something that could’ve been amazing, all for his own selfish dreams. Nevermind that Atsumu’s technically the selfish one, and that the phone works both ways: he’s an adult now, with a brain (supposedly) developed enough to understand their differing goals, their ruined momentum, and how it’s immature of him otherwise.

But there’s no time to dwell.

Atsumu runs a sweat-slick hand through his hair, sighing, refocusing. They’re down twenty to twenty-four. They’re running out of time and stamina, the rhythm falling apart, the crowd leaning forwards and casting shadows in anticipation. It’s up to him to fix the mess. Serve’s up:

Throw. Leap. Swing.

A metal squeak interrupts him. The crowd fizzles, the scoreboard short-circuits, and he’s back in the Higashiosaka indoor stadium after hours.

“Kind of in the middle of somethin’ here,” he crows out. His tongue is caught in his mouth when he catches the sight of Hinata Shoyo, their newest addition, eyeing him carefully from the doorway.

“My bad. I thought I heard someone still practicing.”

Atsumu points a casual thumb at himself. “That’s me.”

“Figured.”

In the artificial glow of the arena’s overhead light, Hinata looks different than how Atsumu remembers. It’s been years, and then some months. Of course he does. Atsumu doesn’t question why this catches his attention- he knows. There’s hard work behind those defined arms and legs, a stronger and broader build to support his frankly still soft-eyed face. He can respect that in a man.

“Whaddya want?”

At this, Hinata begins playing with his hands, picking and tugging at some spots on his fingers as if he’s counting blessings.

“I know you were practicing alone and all, and I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but, I was wondering if you’d toss to me?”

It’s rehearsed. Boyish. Toothless. Not quite how Atsumu remembers it.

“Sure,” his own teeth shine in a wider grin than he’d anticipated. “The more the merrier.”

Wordlessly, they end up on the same side of the net. Hinata throws the ball up in a curve. Atsumu sets it. Hinata spikes it. He repeats the pattern to himself, tries to see if those words look good together, maybe even better.

Atsumu’s eyes burn like high-beams, paralyzing any notion that Hinata could have his cake and eat it too. To seek out a Miya was to subject oneself to any and all possible teasing, taunting, prodding, and/or prying. He should’ve known this when he set his sights on the building. He might’ve known before he even landed in Japan.

“Thought you were an ‘early to bed, early to rise’ sorta guy. What brings ya onto the court this late?”

“S’not late,” Hinata leans more than usual to spike the next one. Atsumu’s getting trickier. He has to catch his breath. “It’s only eight-ish.”

“Eight fifty somethin. Basically nine. So basically ten.”

“That’s not how that works,” he smiles. Nearly misses the next one.

“The other’s aren’t makin’ ya feel excluded, are they?”

“No no no! Nothing like that. I just-“ — the next toss goes up wonkily— “really wanted to practice some more with a high class setter.”

Atsumu scoffs. “Gettin’ a little greedy now, huh? Ya had Tobio for three whole years.”

The next toss-to-be does not leave Hinata’s hands. Atsumu stares with the intention of someone who believes every scab must be picked prematurely clean.

“Come ta think of it, you two were such a pain to deal with across the net. Always pullin’ out these crazy tricks and traps. Made me wanna do some crazy stuff, too.”

Where he’d expect a “really?” on a lit-up face swelling with pride, he got a polite, contained, smile-and-shrug routine.

“Yeah. He’s a really skilled setter.”

“I mean you, too.”

Hinata blinks. All movement halts. He returns Atsumu’s gaze, reflective like a dead-end sign.

Go on.

Unsaid, but Atsumu does. He likes the taste the expression on Hinata’s face leaves on his tongue.

“No need to sell yourself short. Yer on a Division One team now. Best o’ the best. Couldn’t have gotten here unless you were any good.”

“Only as a reserve player,” Hinata smiles bashfully again. Colder this time.

“A reserve player on a— say it with me now— Division. One. Team.”

Nobody says it with him.

But that’s fine. Atsumu can adjust. He always adjusts.

“…y’know, Tobio’s not that scary these days.”

“No?”

“Nah. He’s easy to figure out, when ya get in his head. That’s half the game.”

“Half’s a big amount,” Hinata warns, finally refocusing on the original goal of practicing. He shuffles over to the cart and retrieves another. The previous ball doesn’t feel right in his hands anymore, something about the pressure, the lack of sand or grit. “Don’t you think you’re overestimating?”

“Better over than under. That’s how knockout teams like mine end up losin’ to scrappy little teams like yours.”

“Har-har.”

“S’true,” Atsumu shrugs, preparing for their roles to shift. He likes that they didn’t have to announce it. Now, they build a pattern of versus. Atsumu tosses, leaps, and spike-serves, while Hinata adjusts and receives. A short volley that goes until the ball drops. Rinse and repeat.

“I saw how ya pulled everyone together in that intermission. First year. Closed up the gaps. For someone who doesn’t play setter, that’s some good crowdwork.”

Hinata finally laughs, the sound erupting from behind his older mask.

“I ought to talk to you more at night. You’re a lot nicer when the sun goes down.”

“I’m a lot nicer when people match my speed,” Atsumu responds evenly. It keeps the sincerity of that statement from melting him.

The air’s charged with something dangerous. Hinata starts doing run-ups. He starts reaching into his bag of tricks. Atsumu finds himself nearly dropped to a knee more than he’s used to. He’s going faster. They both are. Faster. Faster. Playing for the kill.

He’d ask for Hinata to go a little easier, only, he likes the way he’s changed now, how he’s started baring his fangs. This— the person he’s seeing now— is Kageyama’s Hinata. Atsumu’s no king, but to see this side regardless is not something he will look in the mouth. Maybe he didn’t need to be royalty. Maybe he just needed to be here tonight.

For a while, the rally speaks for itself, for them, for the forming connection in-between. Hinata’s starting to want, to let animal instinct override formality and promises and compatibility. The facts are laid bare for those with hands to feel them out:

Atsumu is pretty smitten. For how long he’s been this way, he doesn’t really know, and doesn’t really care. This does not, by any measure, mean he will go easier on his analysis of a rookie’s skills. This also does not mean he is not startlingly aware of the monster setter that chases on his heels.

Some things stand out from the moment of impact, craters of observation and shockwaves of change. How he’s got the same inherent animality as Atsumu, an appetite, and a lack of restraint piled high with enough cowardice to let him pretend he’s something else.

In other words: a total waste of potential. Atsumu’s not sure what pisses him off more– the fact that Kageyama’s had three entire years to turn himself into literally anything outside of volleyball and largely walked away from it with his tail between his legs, or that he’s had those three years next to the very spiker that could’ve changed this, changed him, and still ended up as the sort of guy who can’t look the things he wants in the eyes.

It’s the world’s longest game of cat-and-mouse, only on some days, they’re both cats, and on some days, they’re both mice, and on most days, Atsumu is willing to bet real legal tender money that neither of them have so much as called each other.

It must show on his face. Hinata intentionally goes easy on the next one.

“You look happy,” he remarks, a bit of dress-up in place of “what’s so funny?”

“Just thinkin’ to myself.”

“About what?”

“The upcoming season,” he shrugs, killing momentum. “We’ve got some pretty exciting matches lined up for your debut. But I’m sure I don’t need to tell ya that.”

“It’s a little surreal,” Hinata shares a laugh of his own. Atsumu would ask that he elaborate, but he’s a little too occupied with the ball rocketing towards him. The receive’s messy.

“I mean, it could just be jetlag. But sometimes it just hits me, like, woah! This is actually happening! Aah! I’m actually here!”

“Says the guy who’s been here for a while already. ”

“Haha, well, sometimes it doesn’t really feel like it. Everything’s a little different, and everyone’s in a new place, y’know? Or- ah, I dunno. I’m getting all sentimental. My bad.”

Atsumu frowns.

“Nothin’ to apologize for. We’re teammates now, aren’t we? Don’t gotta be so formal.”

Coaxing. They both recognize it. Atsumu finally lets the ball drop, quite literally, and holds his hands up as though faced with arrest.

“Might not help with the whole jetlag thing, but for what it’s worth: Welcome home.”

It should sound ironic, and it does, and it sounds a little bit like something else, too. Hinata smiles, wholly, sweetly, genuinely.

“Yup. I’m back.”

And it finally hits him. Atsumu’s here in this gymnasium, alone, and not alone, and miles away from any rivals, or gold medalists to his silver, or other known pains-in-the-ass. Sure, Kageyama’s hesitant. Or something approximating it. He has the luxury of fear– the cards are in his favor, destiny is in his back pocket, the die’s been cast. He’s a winner. Natural-born. His only enemy is himself.

How comfortable that must be.

Atsumu understands deep in his bones that he will be forever invited to dine, never to stay, never to help clean up or wash dishes. This is just how these events will unfold. There’s something happening between these two: look, don’t touch. Smell, don’t bite. The world’s too full of people for him to settle on being a pitch between the gaps, duct-tape and bubble gum between two magnets.

So he can’t think too hard about how he’s always on the precipice despite being born to break borders.

But he doesn’t have to be afraid- he’s not Kageyama. He can take. He can talk. He can say anything he likes, tonight. If he plays his cards right, maybe he’ll say the right things in the right order for a seat at the table, maybe he’ll get to see what Hinata’s like when he’s not on a one-track-road to the perfect happy ending that just hasn’t happened yet.

Love is malleable. This is a fact. And though he hazards a guess that he’ll never get to play a big enough role to pull Hinata out of this doomsday scenario of a relationship, he might get a few choice scenes, and he can settle for that.

So he offers a proposition.

“Speakin’ of- er, not speakin’ of, we’re gonna be the away team this time around. I’ve got some tapes back at my place if ya’d like to study up. Get you caught up to speed.”

Hinata’s no fool, despite what it might be easier to believe when he’s been in another’s shadow for so long. His eyes widen, his breath settles. Atsumu shrugs one shoulder, answering his silent question of did you seriously just ask me that?

No time like the present.

Hinata glances at the ball as though it’ll answer for him, then back to Atsumu. This is an opportunity two-fold, and in both ways, it’d almost feel like a betrayal to everything except himself. Is it fair to plot against you? Is it fair to move instead of wait?

Is it fair to say you set like him, when the angle’s just right, and your hands curve just a little bit more?

“Is it nearby?” Hinata asks instead. He’s always been good at swapping words; language, an unexpected strength.

Atsumu grins, canine to curved lips. His fringe falls in front of his eyes a little when he tilts his head to the side, and this, too, is reminiscence.

“Just down the block.”

Hinata contemplates- really contemplates, some benign side effect of aging, regret, impulse, or all three. What comes out of his mouth is not a hesitant yes or no, rather, he makes a step forward, another, another. Hinata doesn’t do hesitance, after all.

“Atsumu-san?”

“Hm?”

“I appreciate it. I mean really.”

Then quieter. Something just for them. For rhythm.

“Thank you.”

There’s an unsaid ending to it. An invisible caveat. Thanks, but no thanks. Thanks, but maybe another time. Thanks, but I’m unfortunately on the half decade-long train ride to yearnville, so maybe I’ll catch you later.”

But he says none of these things. Just smiles, cheeks tinged red, hands un-tangled and at his side. It’s not ideal, but Atsumu will take what he can get.

“Anytime.”

He lets himself card his fingers through Hinata’s hair, a gesture just barely innocuous enough that he could pass it off as something else in case it went wrong.

Hinata is a person of the current, a person of nows. And right now, he’s standing up a little straighter, moving a little closer, not quite on his tippy-toes. He’s letting himself live the start of another life. He’s finding someone else.

It tastes like the shore Atsumu’s never seen and the city he’ll never breathe. This moment will never be repeated. Neither of them care.

“Feel more at home now?”

“Yeah,” he responds, a little breathless.

Later that night, when they trace bruises against one another and weave their hands against the blanket’s grain in a moment of relentless wanting and craving and collisions, the thought will cross Atsumu’s mind that he might be luckier than he gives himself credit for. That even though he’s just a little older, and just a little more jaded, he can still usually get what he wants. It’ll never be what he needs, but he can make it work.

But there is still an elephant in the room and out running at night.

“So do ya always make out with yer teammates this outta-nowhere, or is that a recent thing?”

Hinata becomes visibly flustered, diluting himself down into something that remembers what it means to be bashful. The curtain in Atsumu’s bedroom is parted a bit too wide for his liking, but the bedframe and the mess of blanket-and-sheets around them makes up for it.

“Well first of all, you decided to shoot your shot with me. Not the other way around.”

Atsumu laughs.

“Alright, alright. Sure. Second of all?”

“Second of all, I don’t make out, period. Usually. There’s exceptions.”

“And what makes me an exception?”

Atsumu asks this question with a smile, Hinata’s shadow casting one half of him and the moonlight outlining another. A small and rough hand finds a resting place at his collarbone.

“Well. I figured all that flattery had to be for something.”

“Aw c’mon now. Give me some credit. I can flatter ya without ulterior motives.”

Hinata gestures to the two of them, closer to each other than either could’ve previously imagined in some hazy re-enactment of a moment long past and another never to be had, somewhat amused.

“Sure. Yeah. No ulterior motives.”

“None at all,” Atsumu smirks, saintly. It’s maddening and refreshing all the same.

When the silence starts to build, Atsumu fills it. At least he can reassure himself this way: he’ll never be the type to let good things go in favor of saving face. He leans into Hinata, a hand at the side of his face, tucking stray strands behind his ear.

His smile drops.

“I’m serious, though. I get the feeling this isn’t your usual team-icebreaker of choice. ”

“Woah, I wonder. I’m just throwing out a guess, but, maybe it’s because I’ve been out of the country for two years?” Hinata dismisses with a light shrug.

“Nah. Somethin’ else. Yer quieter.”

Hinata sits up. It’s clear Atsumu will not let this go.

“Compared to what? Highschool?”

“Wasn’t that long ago.”

“Well yeah, but-”

“Ya think I remembered ya this well just to get in your pants?”

“Don’t be so vulgar,” Hinata shoves a fistful of blanket against Atsumu’s face. He’d chuckle, if only it didn’t feel like the right scene at the wrong set. Atsumu swats his hand away.

“I’m just sayin’. Ya stood out. You were all…” he waves his hands around, searching, churning useless kinetic energy, “everywhere. All the time. A real monster, ‘cept for when ya fumbled the ball.”

The memory alone makes Hinata wince a bit, but he quickly finds his smile again.

“You’re doing the flattery thing again.”

“Maybe I am. But my point stands- yer holdin’ back. Nothing’s worse than a spiker that won’t slam the ball I tossed for him.”

Atsumu leans in even closer, and for a moment, they both expect to kiss again, to let the current state of affairs sweep them away. Atsumu reigns himself in.

“So why’s that?”

Hinata tilts his head, bridging the gap between them. They exchange the same air, hot and close. A paradoxical of restrained intimacy, for old times sake. Nothing effective enough to shake Atsumu off his trail. It’s hard to fake out someone who’s only looking for easy kisses.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he admits. “I play better than before.”

“Ya know that’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean, then? Enlighten me.”

“Feels like yer…I dunno. Runnin’ from somethin’?”

Atsumu smiles languidly, pulling back and propping his head up against his palm and blocking out the moonlight from the window. From here, Hinata looks a little darker, a little colder, a little further away.

“...or someone.”

A pause. Hinata closes his eyes, brows furrowed, the blanket settling over his shoulders. Contemplating again. When it starts looking like he might never reveal his findings to the public, Atsumu begins peeling away the etiquette, nicety by nicety.

“I don’t like bein’ a checkpoint, personally.”

“You’re not- you’re not a checkpoint,” Hinata exclaims it with so much abruptness that Atsumu can’t help but take it as genuine. Still- the shell’s not been cracked, the pearl’s still inside, and he wants it. He wants it.

So he keeps going.

“Then what am I? Surely not yer first.”

“I don’t have to disclose that to you.”

“Some kinda rebound, then?”

“No! No, it’s not like that-”

“So? What’s it like?”

Atsumu gives a tilt of his head, a nod of affirmation. Do it. Say it. Tell it how it is.

“Enlighten me.”

Hinata looks as though he might get angry- as though he might’ve been angry before all this, and is only just now remembering that fact. But the longer he stares, and tenses, and the longer he digs his fingers into the mattress cover, his once-there anger starts to melt away, starts to simmer into a quiet and guilty acceptance.

“I don’t…I don’t know,” he glances up, “I really like you. I think I’ve really liked a few people, at different times, and for different reasons. None of it ever felt…fake, or, like a ‘fling’, or anything.”

His gaze turns steely, sharp. A silent knife of a question: do you think my heart is big enough, to love everyone I’ve ever met?

“You’re not a rebound.”

“Hm. Noticing a pattern…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothin’,” Atsumu feigns his own bastardized version of innocence. “Just wondering if yer more drawn to setters is all.”

“This is about Kageyama,” the realization dawns on him, had been dawning on him, as horribly infuriating as it was expected.

He cannot play in Japan and not expect their identities to be intertwined once more. Before, and maybe after, maybe tomorrow, it’ll go back to being exciting. He’ll believe in soulmates again. But here, tonight, next to his setter who takes the place of his setter, he’d rather not think of this at all.

“You tell me. Isn’t it always?”

“No.”

“Oh?”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“Right.”

“I just wish— ugh. Forget it. This is so not the time.”

“Go on?”

Hinata stills. He stares at Atsumu as though he’s just taken a screwdriver to the kidney, with his setter’s hand around the handle.

“What are you trying to do?” he asks, somehow both soft and accusing. Maybe all accusations start out soft-shelled, before they cut nice things apart.

“Figure you out,” Atsumu confesses. “Yer a real piece of work. Hard to imagine all yer sighin’ and swoonin’ is over a wet cardboard box of a guy who just so happens to be a star setter.”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Cardboard box? Or star setter? ‘Cause at least he’s a good-lookin’ box. Could be worse.”

“The first one- wow. You’re like. Serious. Hey, has anyone ever told you that-”

And Hinata stops himself, because he has said this, and been told this, and now knows that this phrase can be devastating. That he did not understand the caliber of rifle he was holding until it fired. That he was young and stupid to use it, and it might’ve changed Kageyama more than he wanted or realized.

“...told me that?”

“Nothing. Nevermind.”

“Yer doin’ it again,” Atsumu grimaces. “I’m not your glass cannon from Karasuno. You can talk to me.”

“It’s a little mean.”

“Bite me.”

“You can be a little mean.”

“...That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

Atsumu snickers, then tries, fruitlessly, to hold in his full-bodied laugh, short and powerful like a cannon.

“I’m hurt, Sho. I’m…I’m wounded. Oh, oh, I’m bleedin’ out.”

“Alright alright,” Hinata shoves Atsumu back, a little braver, a little stronger. He’s missed having a little dose of violence, in a weird way. “I get it.”

A small break, to catch their breath, to fight their way to the same page.

Hinata is someone who knows what he wants. He’s not sure it wants him back. Atsumu just wants to look at him for a little bit longer- he’s prettier when he laughs, when his hair falls just right.

Finally, when the mechanical bustle of the city streets and the night breeze have done their part to fill in the gaps, Hinata turns on his back and faces the ceiling.

“You love me, right?”

Atsumu sighs. How mortifying- to be caught in the act. No bandit mask or facepaint or props. Just him, and his wants, and the part of him that still wants control in all things.

“Fer tonight.”

“Just tonight?”

He says it just fine. This is because it’s nighttime, he’s coming down from the high of being wanted just as badly as he wants, and he hasn’t thought too hard about choosing any one person over the other. But there’s something about how he asks the question- something that makes Atsumu realize that, in another time, or another life, he would’ve been a real jerk for that. That Hinata would be asking this with tears in his eyes.

But this is not that life. This is his apartment, and Hinata’s eyes are completely dry.

“And however many more tonights yer’ willing to chip in for. Could be just one. Could be a week. But-” Atsumu lets himself lie down, lets himself nestle into the pillow and face Hinata’s profile at eye level, “-If I asked you ta spend the rest of yer life with me, could ya give me an answer?”

Hinata thinks. And thinks. And thinks.

And when he frowns, they both understand. Maybe he’s always been just a little greedy.

“Then for tonight, and however many more. Could you do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Don’t bring up Kageyama, please.”

Atsumu frowns. “Thought ya liked him?”

“I do— I do. I just. It’s weird, I can’t explain it. Just, please, Tsumu. I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t bring him up. I wanna be my own person, my own player. Not just an extension of my setter.”

“Don’t need ta tell me that. I always knew you were somethin’ else.”

“Flattery.”

“Truth. And I promise. I won’t bring him up- not when I’ve got ya.”

And though it’s the logical thing to say, and the easiest route to go on, Atsumu can’t help but wonder if he’s setting himself up to be a liar. If the reason Kageyama inevitably found his way into this conversation is because he’s inexplicably magnetized to Hinata in both attractive and repulsive ways, or if it’s because he’s only sick of talking about him in the context of something untouchable.

“One day,” his mind unhelpfully supplies, “you’re going to watch them dance at their wedding, and you’re going to wish more than anything to be the portrait above their bed, the paint on the wall. You better not waste this feeling, here, now. You better not fuck it up.”

Being something separate and powerful should have fixed him. It should have satiated him. It’s no longer nine and ten, no, there’s new numbers for new adults, new courts to conquer for a quicker duo. A, dare he say, more powerful duo. He should be satisfied.

He’s not. He loves Hinata a little too much to contend with that right now.

Hinata smiles, flips so that he’s pressed chest-to-chest with Atsumu, heartbeat against a heartbeat in the blue-black darkness.

“Thank you,” he says, and it’s a vulnerable, precious, absolute diamond of a word. It’s something Atsumu will keep inside his heart for a very long time.

Atsumu kisses him in exchange, deep and sensual, running his fingers down the intricate grooves and fiber-work of Hinata’s shoulder blades.

“Of course.”

S: 1:0

Kageyama heard this story once, about wax and wings and reaching too far.

It’s a story in English, which is equal parts funny and infuriating, considering he’s just finding out the original story is in very old Greek. This means it’s a translation, so technically, he’ll never know the full story the way it was meant to be told. Oral tradition was apparently only reserved for people who were either dead or good with words, and for better or worse, he was neither.

He thinks about it when he runs. If he tries very hard, he might even contemplate: the sun, the spray of the sea, the consequences of wanting what you can’t have.

In about a week, he will have the most important match of his entire life. It is not the pinnacle of his career, at least, not on paper, but that doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that he doesn’t know if he’d prefer incineration via atmospheric proximity to the sun, or drowning via ocean current.

There is no version of the story where the winged boy survives.

Breathless, legs burning, he comes to a stop by a park bench that is wet with rain from the night before. If he were more grown up, and perhaps a bit nicer to himself, he would sit down and catch his breath, run a hand through his sweat-soaked hair and daydream about ideal scenarios.

He’s back down the hill and around the bend of buildings he’s passed several times when his mind wanders further, earlier. White day. Piles of cards and chocolates in his locker. In the garbage. In the landfill. When everything is tallied up, he is somehow more wasteful than people who learned to love fast and love early. He’s never going to enter those buildings.

A handful or passerbys stop, startle, swivel on their personal axis. They might’ve recognized him. His face has been in a lot of places lately, but never where he needs it, never reaching the shores of a far-off country or the terminal of an airport again.

He had his chance already. He hopes Hinata was watching. He hopes Hinata has been eating well.

Finally, his lungs give out, complain too much. The weather is nice and his appetite is satiated. Stopping still feels like weakness and not patience. For maybe the hundredth time that week, he pulls out his phone and hovers over a call button.

He checks the time and the weather, then the time again. He should be heading over to the gym for team practice. No call is made for the same reasons he never ate any chocolate or read any cards.

The ocean, he finally decides. Because I can swim. He would’ve survived if he swam.

But what if there are rocks? What about the current? How will you get to land?

There’s an embarrassing habit he’s been developing lately. Thinking in voices that aren’t there. Imagining a connection that is stuck in a highschool gymnasium from the past. It responds to him, and like a miser, he accepts gratefully.

I don’t know, comes his answer. But the fall from above would’ve killed him worse.

There is no “worse.” A fall is a fall. You’re dead either way. You either fall forever or you hit the bottom.

He closes his eyes, retrains his mind. He shouldn’t imagine things that will never happen to him; he’s the tower-watcher, not the boy, the dragon, not the princess. Teachers used to tell him that maybe he’d be more invested in their classes if he saw himself in their stories, but nobody likes being told the only time they’ll get a cool sword is when it’s driven through their heart.

He’ll ask Hoshiumi for recommendations later, he thinks, about things he could say. Hoshiumi always seemed to know what he was doing, and if he remains formal enough, the illusion that he is someone else entirely won’t shatter.

It makes him angry sometimes, how similar they are until he starts paying attention. He ties his shoes differently, not in methodology or speed but just differently, likes different brands, makes a different face when he’s deep in thought. It angers him because Hoshiumi himself doesn’t even know that it is different.

Kageyama never really changed. He just learned better words, softer expressions, the delicate art of gaining respect. The only person who could change him is going to be his opponent in a week, and maybe then, there’ll be hope. Right now, Kageyama still has to suppress the urge to bark out orders.

He’s not going to make Hoshiumi do anything. He wouldn’t get it. It’s not fair to look at someone and assume them to be an actor, a body-double for someone you know, when the world is just as much theirs as it is yours and his. It’s a useless endeavor anyway, even if he got him to make different expressions and tie his shoelaces a little more like that, he will never become what Kageyama is looking for.

Kageyama’s head begins to hurt. He wasn’t built to think this hard about anything, really. Thinking’s become an ongoing disease that now, in adulthood, he can only best by outrunning. Hinata’s always a headache in body, spirit, and soul.

Oh, he wants to hit him. He wants to hit him so bad. Maybe push him too, get pushed back, shove and kick and all the rest of it. Even if he’s too old for it, and even if he’s not actually here right now, next to him, and probably wouldn’t want to say hi by getting hit anyway.

Here’s the story:

In highschool, Kageyama learned too many things about himself. They were so terrifying, so all-encompassing, so mundane and said with the ease of a conversation made to fill fake space that he pushed them elsewhere and kept his head in the game.

In junior high, he knew nothing when he needed to. Even if someone had pulled him aside, had gently answered all his questions or invited him to an essential sleepover, it wouldn’t have changed anything. He’d still end up exactly where he is now.

That’s a truth that nobody, not even an Olympian, a prodigy, or a boy with wings can contend with. That they will always end up in the darkness. That nobody is immune to their own perceptions of what they deserve.

In adulthood, he ran out of ibuprofen and needed to go to the convenience store. Part of why he was on this run to begin with. He’s been getting frequent headaches as a punishment for overworking a brain not meant for much more than sports and food.

In the convenience store, after he’s found some medicine, he starts seeing double.

Crouched over, one knee to the very unsanitary floor for balance, is the Miya twin he remembers the best. They make eye contact– he’s not sure why, not sure what about the pace of his steps or the weight of his eyes incentivized him to turn around, but he turns all the same.

At first, he has the sort of unamused look that one would have upon observing an ant, or perhaps something shiny on the ground that becomes a can tab the closer you come to it. He seems to need to remember that Kageyama is very real.

“Oh,” he says, as though they haven’t been locking eyes for about thirty seconds. Then, teeth bare, gums show, and he has a smile for the ages.

“Long time no see, Tobio-kun.”

“Yeah,” he responds, even though it hasn’t been a long time at all. Atsumu’s expression twitches– maybe it was a joke that flew over his head. He starts to smooth the silence out into the cracks between their words, a brick-and-mortar dance.

“What’re you in for?”

He stands, makes himself eye level. From here, Kageyama can see that he’s just as exhausted, just as hardworking. His basket holds various products of variously discounted prices– none of which are particularly healthy.

“Um. Headache medication.”

“Ahh,” his eyes widen; so the elephant speaks, so the elephant gets headaches. “That so? Sorry ta hear that.”

“They’re not bad. I just ran out.”

“Right, right. Godbless stores like this one, then. Always there when ya need ‘em.”

“Mm.”

From this angle, a rare perspective occurs: it is not immediately clear which one of these two athletes is the prodigy, the star, the supreme ruler of the court. What’s made obvious instead is that one setter knows something the other doesn’t.

Clueless, Kageyama returns the question.

“And you? What are you, uh, in– here for?”

Atsumu shrugs. “Got hungry. On a snack run.”

“Oh.”

Kageyama really shouldn’t say anything, but the products in Atsumu’s basket manage to stay in his peripherals long enough that he feels some nausea in his own stomach.

“Do you…usually buy this sort of stuff?”

Attention swiveled, Atsumu inspects two separate packages of ramen. One is cheaper, but lower quality. Another is the reverse. A tale as old as time.

“What, ramen? Sure. Don’t you?”

“Not really,” Kageyama says, a bit too quickly. “They have too much sodium, too many carbs, and can throw off digestion. They’re not good for an athlete.”

Atsumu whistles, low and clear.

“Checks out. Still walkin’ around with only VB on the brain, huh?”

Kageyama’s not sure what to say to that. He makes half a nod.

“Must be hard,” the other continues, deciding on the more expensive one and tossing it in the basket, “to have that much control over yerself. Stickin’ to the plan all the time. No cheat days.”

“Not really. I’m not picky.”

“Neither am I,” Atsumu responds. He might be losing his patience or finding something intriguing. Kageyama can’t really tell.

A pause.

“I never saw a point in followin’ those meal plans to a T. Just eat when yer hungry n’ train when you’re full. Simple as that. You miss out on the good stuff if ya play too safe.”

Kageyama nods, as though he understands, as though he realizes he’s looking and listening through the bars of a house kennel, leash and collar, with his nice things and hands that feed. Staring at the not-quite-hims that pass by, foreign, faster, freer.

Wild animals have shorter lifespans than domesticated ones. Does this make the living more tender?

“You should try one of these. They’re pretty good. Not too spicy, ‘cause then ya can’t taste anythin’ else.”

“I’ll consider it. Thank you.”

“No problem,” Atsumu grins, placing the cup in question back on the shelf. Neither of them will move it again.

This is usually where most conversations like this one end. The song-and-dance of social etiquette is over. Stop the music. Cut. Kageyama is content with his serving, his speaking. Atsumu, however, turns back to him for seconds.

For a moment, just a moment, he doesn’t say anything. Simply sizes him up, top of the head to the shoes and back. He smiles again, close-lipped this time. It looks different. Feels different.

“Lookin’ forward to our match?”

Not our match, he doesn’t say. Mine and Hinata’s.

“Yes. We won’t lose.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. We’ve got some real beasts this time. Lots of post-match plans that’ll get real awkward real fast if we don’t mop the floor with ya.”

“We’re working hard.”

“Aren’t we all?” Atsumu nearly laughs. “My teammates have got me movin’ around like crazy. I thought I had stamina before, but man, Sho’s got me beat. Him and Bo-kun runnin’ rings around me.”

Predictably, stimuli get paired, experiment results are generated, the pin drops. Kageyama perks up in visible alarm. It gives Atsumu a strange sense of joy that he’s spent longer thinking about than he has actually feeling it.

Right, of course. They’re teammates now.

Kageyama has a lot of questions. He knows that, no matter what Atsumu says, he could fairly confidently find the real answer. He’s known Hinata for longer. Knows what he really means most of the time. Home-field advantage. Anything Atsumu says would also provide the unsaid, and that’s more than enough information as-is.

Before he can ask them, Atsumu closes some of the distance between them. He doesn’t raise his head to match Kageyama’s level. Doesn’t fix the scarce one-inch gap of height.

“Of course, I don’t need ta tell you that, do I?”

The conversation’s a reverse play-by-play of one years past, two commentators discussing the worth of something that’ll exceed them both. Castling a memory. Swap these two pieces around: who knows Hinata Shoyo? Who will get to him first?

It’s not about jealousy. It was never a jealousy thing. Jealousy assumes that Kageyama has played the game long enough to know where he stands, what he lacks, what he could have when there’s no ball in play and no court to fight on. Instead, it’s an observational obsession, the same thing that turns the eyes blood red and the mind onto itself.

No. Tell me. Tell me everything. Where is he? What’s he like, is he healthy, is he strong?

“Dunno how ya kept up with him when we were kids. He’s a monster. Ya got my condolences.”

Say something, ask him. You won’t enter this building again.

“Yanno, when he first came onto the team– ah, he probably told ya, didn’t he? No use preachin’ to the choir.”

Tell me what?

Kageyama used to be able to do it. He did it, once before. Can I ask you something? Are you his “someone else?”

Come on, Kageyama. Whether it's your hands or your mouth, use them, use them.

Hands.

Mouth.

Come on.

“Well!” Atsumu claps his hands together, conducting silence with the same ease as a closed fist would’ve. As a show of good faith, or maybe out of pure pity, he lets the pause linger. Gives Kageyama a chance.

“...Glad I ran into ya. Might sound weird, but I had a feelin’ somethin’ like this might happen. Got what I came here for, so–”

He shrugs and shows his palms as though he’s a magician who can make himself disappear, the kind that knows his tricks will keep people up at night. Ta-da.

“I’ll be on my way. Take care, Tobio-kun.”

Kageyama nods. He now understands why outdoor cats always come home at night, why dogs don’t jump over fences, why birds don’t fly out of windows.

Kings are decided by lineage, by how well the civilians remember someone they’ll rarely see. He’s made up of memories. Here is someone who doesn’t need them. Here is someone who is living life in a way he wishes he could understand.

“Yeah. Take care.”

Atsumu doesn’t just vanish in a cloud of smoke. He walks to the check-out counter– no, he steps back, inspects some of the products set out near the register and turns one around in his hand. He puts it back. He makes uncanny small talk with the employee, uncaring of how taboo it might be. He takes out his wallet. He finds his card. No, he doesn’t want a receipt. He says his thanks and swivels on his heel– he’s one of those people that doesn’t step, just swivels, just pivots like the world is a ballroom and he knows its dance by heart.

There are a million small chances for Kageyama to say something. He doesn’t. He pretends to read the warnings and labels on his ibuprofen, listening for the sounds of running shoes to pass him by. Do not exceed 1200 milligrams in a twenty-four hour period. He might’ve waved. The automatic doors close.

A pause, while the door-jingle plays.

The box in his hands feels more like a popped balloon, limp string reaching down to the dirty tile floor, a sewing needle safely tucked in Atsumu’s pocket as he walks out.

Kageyama might as well be a child; suddenly his clothes fit too big, his running gear is all wrong, his socks are scrunched up right at the heel from where the lip of his sneaker has been rubbing against it, and surely, he’s going to get a blister.

But he’s not a child, is he? He’s a full-grown adult who can’t start sniffling in public or moping about his blister because he needs to start moving soon, needs to get to his stupid appointment. Put a bandaid on it. Keep moving.

A small side effect of failing most of his language classes results in this: Kageyama is, like many people, a victim to his own density. A black hole of his own making with no way to articulate it.

How do you admit that you’re only an adult in title and awards, that maybe you went to a few important government buildings here and there and managed to fill out some papers that one time? What about all the everything– what if things like sex and drinking are virtually indiscernible to him, what if he still doesn’t know what to do when someone abruptly bursts into tears near him, or when he gets that rock-in-your-stomach feeling for no reason at all and it’s too late to wake anyone up, or when one of his teammates says something to him in a certain cadence and he knows right then that they will never cross paths after this section of his life is done?

He’s an adult, but not a grown-up.

Grown-ups can make wings out of wax. They pick themselves back up and call their parents and text each other and grit their teeth. They drink or cry or complain or fuck until somehow, some way, the problem gets clearer, the world shifts a little to the left or right, and everything is okay until tomorrow. He can’t do any of those things, doesn’t know how, doesn’t know who to ask if it’s not too late.

Screw it. Veneers off. Forget that tower and labyrinth. He’s the bell and the dog. He’s drooling over the idea of his own promise to someone else, even if the plate is empty, even if he’s just conditioned himself to be okay with neurological misfires and false endorphins. Isn’t that close enough?

Even now, he can’t make that call. Won’t say the sentence. Can’t find his words.

It’s about here, at the halfway mark, a smaller and meeker part of him pipes up with the ultimate insult to injury: hey, you’re overthinking it. Calm down.

This part of him knows how the story ends. He’s got nothing but himself to be afraid of.

Pointing out the nature of his situation doesn’t make it any less present, and will not drag Atsumu Miya back into this convenience store so he can interrogate him on someone he hasn’t even found the courage to video call.

Calm down, says the broken coolant tank that’s responsible for his “check engine” light going on. Calm down, says the whistling of the kettle before it overflows. Right. Sure. Calm down. Stress out about calming down. Freak out about calming down, because panic is starving, baby, panic’s got a bottomless appetite.

God, how does Hinata do it? How does he manage the act of stripping off his skin and letting other people see everything underneath? It’s losing too much. Giving away too many pieces. There’s too many people in the world with pieces of him, Kageyama realizes, and he might not be able to compete.

There are ways Hinata can exist without him, and suddenly, he starts to feel pretty stupid for thinking about a promise he made in middle school this hard.

He never looked it up after Tsukishima had passed a snide comment some hazy afternoon of their first year, just heard the words and pieced enough together to be offended; “Did you see the way his head turned when the coach mentioned “food?” Talk about pavlovian conditioning,” but now he’s heard it more often, now he understands, he understands.

It’s stupid and silly and unbefitting of his age but god does he feel bad for that dumb dog, waiting and waiting and drooling and drooling, big black eyes sharp teeth paws on the table please please please give me something, give me something, you love me don’t you so don’t make me wait.

If he’d bothered to do his research, Kageyama would’ve realized the irony of it all: It’s classical conditioning, not instrumental conditioning. There’s no rewards, no punishments.

He’s already familiar with the second type; roll over, sit, set this way, shut your mouth here. Congratulations, now there’s friends. Now there’s victories. Now there’s an invitation to the fucking Olympics. Good behavior reinforces rewards and vice versa.

Classical conditioning is about what surrounds. You don’t beat the animal to change its brain. You play a metronome. You ring a bell. You show it someone familiar, now it’s dinnertime, now it’ll sit there and salivate and patiently wag its tail even if the food never comes because there’s a metronome playing, damnit, so surely someone’s coming for him.

Surely, none of the scientists ever just turned the lights off and went out for drinks and forgot about the dog in the contraption listening to the ticking, the ringing. Surely they wouldn’t do that. He’d sit there forever, wouldn’t he, until one day the sounds stop and he looks around for the first time and realizes he can’t remember what the sun felt like.

Did Pavlov love his dogs?

That’s the sort of question only children ask. Try explaining about the mouse utopia or the cloth and wire monkey and they won’t say “yes, but you could argue the absence of stimuli is a variable in and of itself, prey animals aren’t built for boredom so of course they turned to violence,” no, they’ll ask “what was the mouse’s name?” or “did they give the monkey a banana after?”

So maybe he’s still a child, underneath it all. He might’ve grown taller. Stronger. Learned how to run but not to chase. Maybe that’s why Atsumu looks at him like that, like he knows.

Two years is a long time. Hinata didn’t stagnate. Hinata had a hunger and pursued it. Kageyama ran and waited. This was just the kind of adults they became.

It must be some sort of fucked up tragedy. Here he is, Olympian, King of the Court, Karasuno’s monster. Here he is asking stupid questions but not really asking them because he’s scared, deserves this, has a headache. What time was it now? Had Hinata eaten dinner yet?

Somebody’s gotta break the news to that dog: Pavlov didn’t love you, and it’s not because you bruised him or bit him or barked at him. It’s because if he loved you when you were both new he wouldn’t have become famous, and experiments like this one aren’t about love anyway.

Strange. His chest hurts. He should take the ibuprofen and continue his run. That’s the grown-up thing to do.

It’s time to move. Miya is long gone. He has a match to win.

– ☾ –

The Black Jackals win against the Schweiden Adlers 3-1. It’s one match out of countless matches around the world of varying importance, but none of them will make Hinata’s heart swell quite the same.

His muscles are sore, his legs especially, right around the knees. No matter how hard he gasps he doesn’t get enough air in, so he doesn’t focus on anything else: just how to breathe. It’s hard when he’s smiling so wide. It’s hard when his jaw hurts too, because he’s weary and delighted and drunk on achievement.

He has chosen to be exact over being lucky, and opportunity has graced him appropriately. Maybe that’s all luck is.

Everyone has seen this story before even if it might not be recognized as such. The final showdown has just occurred, and now, there’s nothing but dragon fire and scorched buildings, our protagonist and his foil. Skip the marrow. Everybody wants to get to the ending; flowers, wedding, magic kiss that turns the frog–dog–beast to a human and whatever else, but the real world does not operate by those rules. There must be an inbetween. Kageyama must encounter Hinata after their match has concluded and all the reunions have occurred.

The setter has his perfect hands in his pockets. Paper crinkles under his tight-knit knuckles, things he’d hastily written down to remind himself to talk about. It’s blasphemous in nature: good friends do not write down points of conversation for each other. They just talk. Just know.

But it’s been two years, and he’s nervous, so he allows himself this one vice. He’s always been writing. Carrying the pencil as another would the cigar.

It might be cold outside the restaurant, or it could just be that the inside had been so hot, so stewed in the air of get-togethers and chatter, that it only feels cool by comparison. He idles by the entrance, the evening is quick at his heels and his shadow grows shorter by the minute. Hinata should walk out any moment now.

He came back. With this simple fact comes the rush of relief, of ego; see, see? I told you he’d come back, let me out of the contraption and feed me and tell me that I was good. I knew that bell would stop ringing for an empty plate.

The door slides open. It’s quieter. Most of their fellow Karasuno alumni have left, returning to their separate lives after reminiscing on the soft drunkenness of youth.

But does he love you?

More of a scene, not really an encounter, like a movie being played through the screen of his eyes. Hinata steps out, Atsumu close behind, and suddenly the heat from the inside has seeped into the outside, weighing heavy on Kageyama’s chest.

“—aw, but it feels like I just got used to the time here and I don’t wanna start all over, y’know?”

“Sure, that’s why I’m sayin’ ya don’t gotta.”

“And I just explained why I do! What, I can’t complain about circadian rhythms and be grateful at the same time?”

This.

This is not right.

This is not right; it’s so natural, his ease of speaking, the way Atsumu looks at Hinata when he speaks, glances at Kageyama and turns his attention back, this is so incredibly natural and yet that doesn’t make it right. Talent might be natural. Hunger might be natural. But Hinata used to not know big words like “circadian”, or if he did, he didn’t use them with this ease, and Atsumu used to be in his peripheral vision, next to him but never ahead, and Kageyama used to know exactly what he was going to say because he wrote it down on a bit of paper.

Now what?

Hinata’s eyes widen from over Atsumu’s shoulder, and he leans forward to get a better view. It takes the culmination of six years of willpower for Kageyama to not flinch backwards.

“Kageyama! Hey! I didn’t know you stuck around.”

Right. Of course. He’d made it sound like he was going home, just needed fresh air. What a lie. Maybe he was growing up— telling big lies, big big lies, because the only air he wanted was whatever Hinata was breathing even if it’d scorch his lungs, even if sentences like that are impossible to say out loud.

“Yeah. I did. I wanted to…”

A bit late to pull the paper out and read it, isn’t it?

“Thank you for the game. You were— ”

“Incredible?” Hinata concludes, or perhaps pays forwards. It’s as though he’s had this conversation before. Kageyama nods in hopes of the former.

“Yes. I couldn’t believe it. The save with your left, how’d you learn to do stuff like that?”

“Brazil. How else?” he smiles, basking in the rare verbal praise. “You killed it out there, too!”

“Thanks.”

Perhaps they’ve had this conversation before, and are only acting out a pantomime for the sake of good will. Perhaps every conversation, even if the words are the exact same, feels different when kept between two people.

But Atsumu is not invisible. He’s right there, in the middle, head turning left and right to track their volley of modesty and restraint.

“Easy on the serves next time, yeah?” he croons.

Even if it’s a joke. Even if he’s just poking fun, poking holes, reminding them both that he is flesh and blood and damn every fate he is still here, the deepest part of Kageyama answers where it won’t be heard.

Yes, alright, if it means we’ll play again. I’ll renew a bad habit to keep your eyes on me.

“I should’ve taken more risks,” he says instead.

“No use saying ‘should’ve’ after the whistle blows, Yamayama. I think you were perfect.”

Atsumu nods in support. It’s the only response he has to make; a quiet admittance, a polite cessation.

“Thank you. Have…have you been eating well?”

Hinata is somewhat dumbfounded by the question, and lets it show. Understanding kicks in soon after. He’s always understood, and always will understand; Kageyama Tobio is one of the many languages he’s practiced to fluency.

“Yeah, I have. The food over there’s really good. Keeps you in great shape.”

He swings his arm as if to demonstrate. It’s a stupid gesture that Kageyama will replay as many times as the cross has been recorded.

“That’s good. I’m glad.”

“‘M glad too,” Atsumu interjects— although it’s not quite interjecting, since you can’t have a conversation with someone in the middle and expect them to go slack like a bird hitting a window.

“Helps to have all our wing spikers in top shape. Setters like you n’ me depend on it, right, Tobio?”

“Uh— right. We do.”

Hinata watches them very carefully. He is calculating the lives he might’ve lived before, the ones he can live now. He is wondering, in his own kind way, if it’s too greedy to devour two people whole.

“Then I better take care of myself, huh?”

Kageyama’s shoulders ease up, his bones stop squeezing the organs beneath. The time has passed him by, and he’s been delicate enough; Hinata is stable, and whole, and powerful, and he’s come back for him.

So he’s done stealing glances. Done comparing hands against one another, picturing palms that kiss and interwoven fingers. Those are the daydreams of a highschool boy who cannot say what he wants.

So when Atsumu puts his hand on Hinata’s shoulder rather possessively, perfectly calibrated fingers marking the territory of his shoulder, Kageyama forgets entirely about the paper in his pocket. He feels no need to wait. No need to insist.

Both pairs of eyes are on him, but only one pair of teeth. In the end, he is still the lucky one.

The soft-eyed Kageyama, the one who could bare his soul (whatever the hell that meant, he still thinks it's stupid even a handful of years later) is not quite back but there’s traces of his skittish pout in his lips. After-images of his fidgeting carved into Kageyama’s defined knuckles. Hinata finds himself staring. Another finds himself in the same boat.

“And yet, here we are. Way past all our bedtimes. Got any more plans before today turns into tomorrow?” Atsumu prods.

The two exchange a very long glance.

Pretend nothing else exists in this moment. Not Kageyama’s loneliness, his bluntness, Hinata’s hunger and his animality. It’s not real. It never happened. Not in this exchange.

When they stare at each other it hits like a mutual tidal wave, tectonic and suffocating: just how much they’ve missed each other. Sometimes there’s no other words for it.

I missed you. I missed you. I really really missed you.

It makes Kageyama take a deep, almost shuddering breath in. Even that makes Hinata’s eyes soften, this rival of his hasn’t really changed at all, even if he’s someone brand new. Can those two things coexist? He doesn’t know. The bell-call comes from inside the house.

Then, before the curtains drop, Kageyama does something very brave.

“I’d like to talk to Hinata alone, if that’s alright.”

And on a rare occasion, he stares at Atsumu directly when he says this. Atsumu liked that about him; that Kageyama always took people seriously when he spoke, no matter their role. Even if they were extras. Bridesmaids. The top of the food chain or the bottom rung.

If only he liked it enough to forgive him.

“Well, I’m personally stayin’ right here.”

He turns to Hinata, checking with eyes alone if that’s alright. Hinata’s response is as ambiguous as it is empowering.

“Don’t worry about little ol’ me. I won’t get in the way of yer little moment, unless ya mind being watched.”

Very well. Kageyama is amenable to that. He’d rather have eyes on him than not. This may not be how he imagined the scene, but a good setter is always open to innovation.

He opens his mouth. It all comes out.

“I thought of you. I thought of you a lot.”

“I did too. Probably more than you,” Hinata counters.

“Shut up— listen.”

“You listen.”

“I’m going first. I mean it.”

He means it. Hinata secedes.

“The day at the park, and later, at the sleepover, you might not remember. You’d just— you’d just say these things, when we were kids, and I don’t know how much you remember them but I do. Every single one.”

Hinata’s mind eases out of competition, and faces the cold water shock of being analyzed instead.

“Um. I wanted to tell you sooner. I wanted to say something.”

“But you didn’t.”

“But I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“I was scared,” Kageyama admits, wholeheartedly. It rings distantly familiar.

“Of me?”

“No. Of— I don’t know. If you’d leave me.”

“Leave you?” Hinata almost laughs. “You make it sound like—“

“I know! I know what it sounds like, just give me a damn minute.”

He is given a damn minute.

“I was worried you’d…moved ahead. You were in this new place halfway across the world, and I was still me.”

“But you’re, like, a crazy awesome setter. You were in the Olympics. Why do you say you were you like it’s a bad thing?”

“Stop interrupting me. It’s because after a certain point I felt like the. Uh. The one dog.”

Hinata is completely blank with confusion. Atsumu does an exceptional job of not chuckling.

“Sorry, the what?”

“The dog.”

“What dog?”

“You know, with the bell? How if you ring the bell it’ll, um. Nevermind. Nevermind. I lost my train of thought.”

“Yama, did you rehearse any of this?”

“I had it written down.”

Atsumu does a terrible job of not laughing.

“Are you going to read off of it?”

“It doesn’t feel genuine.”

“But would it help you to read off of it?”

Kageyama’s neck feels hot, his presence small and fickle. He nods. What greets him is one of Hinata’s more heartfelt smiles, gentle, quiet, reassuring him.

“Then I think you should try again, with the paper this time. From the top.”

“Okay.”

He takes out his crumpled piece of paper, pout in full force and a scrutinizing edge to all his features before he retires it to his pocket. He tries again, from the top.

“Seeing you play today, it meant a lot to me. You. You mean a lot to me. And, um, I think it’s been that way for a really long time. I didn’t have the words for it back then. I wasn’t great at talking, I mean, it usually led to bad things. But now it’s different. I think I—“

“Wait wait wait wait,” Hinata urges. Despite aforementioned blaring red warning signs, he has only just realized what this might be leading up to.

“What?”

“Are you gonna tell me something crazy?”

“…maybe?”

“No, like, I’m serious. Is this going to be life changing?”

“It…might? I don’t really know. I hope not.”

“And you don’t have anything else in your pockets that you’re going to whip out mid-speech?”

“Uh- I have my phone. And my wallet. And my room key. So no.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

Kageyama takes a deep breath.

“I hope we stay like this for a very long time.”

Hinata blinks. Then, he understands. His ribs start to feel tight. His face starts to feel hot. He begins to fantasize about the day the scientists invent a sort of love that doesn’t hurt when you hold it for too long.

“Yeah. Me too.”

He’s already been dreaming of it. To have it said out loud is more than enough.

“There’s one other thing,” Kageyama informs.

For a moment, it becomes clear that he is seeing this moment as he’d see the layout on a court, calculating all his moves with the same precision. Hinata can’t help but giggle. Since when did Kageyama become so chatty?

“Go for it.”

He does not miss it, the split second of eye contact Kageyama makes with their onlooker, the sort of instant understanding that can only happen between two unfortunate geniuses of parallel fates. Maybe asking for permission. Maybe asking for more. The rest all happens very quickly.

It’s unclear who grabs for who first. Who’s fingers are threading through who’s scalp, pushing and pulling and changing the tides. It’s desperation and greed incarnate. It’s the feeling of inherent wrongness being etched onto their lips in such a way that it becomes a relic, studied and worshipped for all time. It’s biting and hunger fulfilled.

Put simply: it’s the second best kiss Kageyama has ever had in his entire life.

They pull away reluctantly, as if they had the oxygen to spare otherwise. Jackets are wrinkled and collars have been tugged.

“Jerk.”

“What?” Kageyama asks, almost afraid.

“You said you weren’t gonna tell me anything crazy!”

“Well, I didn’t say anything. Technically.”

Hinata wipes the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, inexplicably irritated in a toothless, playful way.

“So kissing me is somehow easier than asking for a video call?”

“It’s because you’re right here,” Kageyama answers, genuine, solemn. “It’s better when you’re here. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything after it’s over.”

At this, Hinata’s expression melts into something of pity, of patience, of a saint-like forgiveness.

“You know I’ll always come back to you, right?”

Kageyama holds these words close to his chest. They fill him with an affection so potent that all he can think to do is kiss him again.

To an outside observer, it is unclear if they’re fighting or madly in love or some convoluted combination of both. Atsumu is not sure he’ll ever get tired of it. He adds ibuprofen to his mental shopping list.

Hinata laughs. He laughs not because anything is making him, but simply because he’s happy. The easiest laugh in the world.

“If you weren’t so good-looking, I’d be really mad at you for messing up your big speech.”

“I didn’t mess it up, I just expected it to go a certain way and it didn’t. Because you’re stupid.”

“You literally said out loud that you lost your train of thought, but sure, whatever. You’re going to have to explain the dog thing to me later.”

Kageyama lights up red. He would rather not.

“I’d rather not.”

“Not to interrupt,” Atsumu interrupts, “but I wanna hear this, too.”

Right then, Hinata looks almost apologetically at the bridesmaid leaning against the restaurant’s brick exterior. He’s recalling a distant conversation in a blue-lit apartment.

Atsumu just smiles back. He will, at the very least, be there for the wedding.

“I’m glad I waited for you,” Hinata lays the words down softly, gently, as though they’d shatter elsewise. It’s not exactly clear who he’s talking to.

“Me too,” Kageyama responds.

“Me too,” Atsumu thinks.

Me too. Me too.

I’m happy that I was greedy, too.

S: 1:1

– 𖤓 –

It’s quiet when they’re next to each other. Sweltering. Hinata can feel the jabbing edge of Kageyama’s ribs, how tense his body is, how deeply he’s holding back. Elbows and heads overlap in near-misses, and he just can’t get comfortable. He wonders if its always like this.

It’s the second sleepover of Kageyama’s entire life. This one is entirely his own (un)doing.

“Are you mad?” he wants to ask. For what, he couldn’t imagine. The tackle? The bruise? The fact that they’re here, like this, alone in a house meant for four that barely holds one?

“No,” Hinata doesn’t respond. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s complicated. You’re complicated.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” Kageyama says instead. He’s no longer afraid to speak out loud in the dark. A hand on Hinata’s back pulls him closer, even if the fabric between them is getting wrinkly and discomforting.

“I know.”

“You’re a good spiker.”

“...Yeah. I know.”

Hinata tries to roll away. Kageyama clings to him like algae to a dock, soft until pulled at.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s too hot. I can’t sleep.”

“Oh,” Kageyama lets him go.

All is still. The sheets. Their bodies. The clock and the AC and everything that makes noise. They all pause as though conducted, perfectly, guided en musica universalis.

“I wanna give you this. In case I come back different.”

Kageyama cracks his eyes open, expecting an heirloom, a toy, a badge. He gets Hinata’s eyes staring back instead.

The sheets ruffle. The curtain blows with the wind. Hinata straddles him with a great amount of care, of warning, of ample opportunity for Kageyama to change his mind. If he was honorable and hated himself the right amount, he just might’ve.

Instead, he gets the single best kiss of his entire life. He will hold onto it for years to come.

“Sorry I tackled you,” he says, sounding nothing at all like him.

“It’s okay,” Hinata responds, loving, but nothing at all like him.

They go back to bed, but not to sleep. Kageyama dreams of a world where he is brave enough to say the things he wants to say. Where he cures Hinata’s bruise not because of necessity or worry, but simply because that’s what you do when you love another.

Somewhere in the world, an Italian Greyhound is leashed to a traffic barrier on the side of the freeway. All the cars look the same. There’s eyes in the bushes that ask him why he doesn’t leave; he’s sharp and fast, he can live a new life.

“Because they love me and they’re coming back,” he responds.

“How do you know that?”

He looks out past the traffic barrier, chin resting on bony paws.

“Because I hear it. I hear the sound that means they’re coming back. Hear that? That’s rubber on asphalt. I know that because it’s what a promise sounds like.”

Somewhere in the world, birds and other scavengers pick the meat off some bones on the side of the freeway.

“Thanks for staying,” they say. “You taste different, you must’ve been fed good. Now we understand why you waited.”

– ☾ –