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Hinata wishes the sun would break through the dreary clouds. Winter feels everlasting this year, even though consciously he’s aware that they’re right in the middle of the season and that things have to get worse before they can get better. It could be worse, he supposes; he could be stuck in the seemingly perpetual ice town that was Sapporo like Asahi, who, last he’d heard, had accepted some sort of apprenticeship up there with a wood-worker and had also come down with a fierce case of pneumonia last month. Hinata is still stuck in Sendai and his tiny, backwater hometown for another two months, and then he’s not sure what he’s going to do—he’s still waiting on his entrance exam results with chattering knees—but he does think he’d like snow to become a fond memory rather than something he, at this very moment, can feel bleeding into his socks.
Hinata also wishes he hadn’t dropped his mittens in an ice pond this morning, trying to fish out the volleyball Natsu had accidentally let roll off their front lawn. He wishes his fingers and his toes weren’t currently pink and raw from the frost, threatening to crack if he didn’t borrow some lotion from Yachi sometime soon, and he wishes his thumbs weren’t too frozen to properly maneuver over the keypad of his phone as quickly as he wanted.
And, lastly, he wishes Kageyama had learned enough proper phone etiquette to not reply to his text messages with one-word answers, every single time.
Without looking up from his screen, Hinata instinctively dodges stray students and navigates himself into his classroom and into his desk, though he does bang his knee against a few table corners on his way. Cramming the last of his (second) breakfast into his mouth, he expels all of his breath through his nose with one noisy exhale, then slumps.
Acchan is in the seat next to him digging through his pencil case, but he looks up brimming with concern and questions. “That’s not a face I usually see on you,” he notes.
“Look.” Hinata simply holds the offending screen to his friend’s face, his arm gesticulating wildly as he tries to verbalize his exact grievance. “He’s so… rude.”
The boy blinks through his glasses, peering at what Hinata is trying to show him.
Kageyama (7:32 AM): nah
“Umm, what am I looking at?” he asks.
“This,” Hinata scoffs, “is social constipation in visual form. If this rude guy tries to answer any more of my texts with nah I’m gonna pop all his volleyballs, just watch me!” He slumps farther down in his seat and half of his face disappears into the collar of his hoodie. His friend waits, knowing there must be more to any story that concerns Kageyama Tobio and Hinata’s rarely seen temper, and sure enough, he goes on to complain, “I mean! I’m just tryna be nice to the guy! He could at least have some decency. You know?”
“Did you invite him to hang out with you again?” his friend asks, delicately.
“N-Not just me! Yamaguchi and Tsukishima, too! We were planning to go to the arcade this Sunday and I thought I’d at least be nice and invite Stupid Kageyama along with us!” His voice drops into a hiss when he realizes other people are listening and his ears pink at the thought of this somehow making its way back to his teammates. Ex-teammates, technically. “He didn’t have to brush it off with nah is all I’m saying. He could at least thank me for inviting him out or something, you know? He’s always doing this.”
Acchan seems to sympathize, especially when Hinata appears glum as he deflates further in his seat. “Maybe he’s really busy?”
“Every time?”
This is, as frustrating as it is to admit, not the first time Hinata has extended an invite to his volleyball partner. His first year, he had tried to invite Kageyama along with himself and Yamaguchi to the shrine visit only to receive that word in response. He’s tried every year since, acting as a proper teammate and partner, but every New Year has passed without Kageyama and this year, to Hinata’s annoyance, especially had stung because it would be their last chance together and Kageyama still hadn’t seemed to care.
And it’s not simply shrine visits or Christmas get-togethers or any other major festivities, but even mundane days in between when everyone makes plans to go to the arcade or get shaved ice or fly kites up on the hill near Hinata’s home; Kageyama never comes. He also never says stop inviting me, which is the most frustrating part because then Hinata keeps on fruitlessly trying—only to get slapped with rejection.
Acchan clears his throat, fiddling with his glasses. “Well, he doesn’t seem like a very social person. Maybe he’s uncomfortable about the idea of being around so many people?”
“We’re his teammates,” Hinata squawks. “He’s with us every day!”
“Maybe he’s tired of being around everyone every day?” He regrets his callous words the moment Hinata’s mouth pulls into a frown, flustering to make things right again. “S-Sorry! I’m sure that’s not it!”
Hinata sighs, seeming to resign to the thought. “That’s probably it.”
“No way, Shouyou, no one could ever get tired of being around you,” Acchan persists.
“Kageyama could.” He’s glaring down at his phone screen and the offending text message, eyes burning.
He couldn’t say his relationship with Kageyama has ever been wholly pleasant, the nicer moments always punctuated with bickering and fist fights and a disproportioned amount of hair grabbing. But three years together on a court could soften even the sharpest edges on a person—or so Hinata had presumed. It’s not as if he hates manhandling one another to get into the gym first or Kageyama shouting Idiot Hinata! when he snickers at the boy’s blundering attempts to compliment people; he had just thought it meant something different than Kageyama possibly getting annoyed or angry with him at every turn.
“I-I’m sure he’s just really busy, Shouyou.”
What he’d thought it meant, he’s not sure. Maybe some stupid part of his stupid brain thought it meant he was special or something equally stupid. Being special to Kageyama; that’s an itchy thought. He’s used to the itch localizing in his palms as he begs for a toss, but the unbearable itch bubbling under his skin and all over his body—that’s a more recent sensation. He’s undecided if he likes it.
“Maybe he has a lot of doctor’s appointments. He does seem like a bit of a health nut. Or, uh, maybe he has some friends you don’t know about?”
“Kageyama’s not capable of making friends,” Hinata retorts, glumly. Except for me. If I’m even that.
Desperate now, Acchan weakly throws another possibility into the fray.
“Maybe he has a girlfriend?”
Hinata blinks mechanically, stricken dumb by the very thought. He stares at his friend with an eerie silence that does not befit his nature and the intensity crawls up Acchan’s spine, reminding him of middle school corridors and Hinata chasing after impossible tosses, the way he would look at those who couldn’t believe he would ever achieve his dreams. To add to the chilling aura, he soon breaks out into nervous, broken laughter without any sort of precedence.
“That’s kinda funny, Acchan,” he chuckles.
Then, he promptly smashes his forehead against his desk.
Hinata wonders if there will ever come a time when he’ll no longer have to look up at Kageyama. For three years he’s been standing in front of the mirror and willing himself to grow, just grow with nothing to show for it. Maybe a couple centimeters have added onto his height since beginning high school, but Kageyama’s always won their competitions for most growth and at this point Hinata’s stopped wishing that he would grow and begun wishing that Kageyama would start shrinking instead.
But one advantage to always being below eye level to a person is they may not be able to tell when he’s staring at them.
Hinata takes his sweet time observing the contours of Kageyama’s face, probably not as slick as he’d like to think but Kageyama hasn’t noticed anyway; he’s got his eyebrows turned down in his usual way as he surveys the volleyball court, frowning like the turtle he is. The sunlight beaming in through the window glints whenever he turns his head the right angle, like an eclipse passing through the gymnasium, and it makes him look somewhat impressive.
There’s a rumor going around that a girl in class two likes him. Hinata can’t see why anyone would.
“Oi!” he snaps at an underclassman, making a motion like he’s going to throw his volleyball at them before pulling back at the last second. “I’ve told you a million times, don’t open your arms so wide when you’re blocking! The ball will go right through!”
The poor boy squeaks. “S-Sorry, Kageyama-senpai.”
Hinata imagines Kageyama with a girlfriend, imagines him going on ahead and snapping at her to walk faster, dumbass! or replying to her text messages with nah whenever she suggests they go out on a date. He wonders if the girl from class two knows he’s socially constipated and a total recluse and a volleyball nut, and that liking him (probably) meant sentencing herself to a life of everlasting frustration.
“What?” Kageyama growls, and Hinata jumps a little to realize he’s the one being spoken to. “Gonna tell me there were nicer ways to say that? You know Kindaichi keeps bragging about his underclassmen and what a great legacy they’re leaving behind—we can’t let them beat ours!”
“N-No! I wasn’t…” Hinata meets his eyes, face burning, and blurts out, “Do you have a girlfriend?”
Kageyama squints down at him like he’s sprouted a second head on his shoulder. “What?”
Hinata waits. His stomach churns and begs him to take the words back, but if he says anything else he’ll probably embarrass himself more. For some reason things are always doubly embarrassing whenever they happen in front of Kageyama.
Kageyama, who appears both confused and like he’s questioning his sanity, angles his head. “…No?”
“Well, don’t say it like you’re taking a guess! Do you or don’t you!”
He frowns. “I don’t.”
Hinata feels really stupid now. He and Kageyama don’t talk about things like this; anything outside of volleyball, their team, and the teams they have faced is uncharted territory, mainly because Kageyama has never been interested in anything else and Hinata still remembers his excruciating blunder of asking him why his family has never come to watch one of their matches. They speak of topics within the confines of what’s comfortable, occasionally bicker and brawl like it’s an age-old dance, and maintain a balance in their relationship.
But Hinata does wonder, sometimes, whether three years together with someone shouldn’t mean they could finally test some of these boundaries. It’s strange, when most of their volleyball partnership has been built upon crossing borders and breaking away from shackles, to feel like he’s somehow locked in a box when it comes to Kageyama.
This particular moment doesn’t feel like the right time to bring all of this up, however. Kageyama is still glaring at him suspiciously, as if expecting him to suddenly pull off his Hinata-mask and draw a knife from behind his back.
“O… kay.” He nods. “That’s fine, then. Forget I asked.”
Kageyama is not so easily sated. “But why—”
He is interrupted before he can even begin when Ukai calls the team together, and Hinata rushes forward perhaps too eagerly, ignoring the gaze holding steady on his back. If he can avoid Kageyama until they all separate towards their respective homes, he knows the boy will forget about this entire conversation by the time they next meet. Sometimes he’s eternally grateful that Kageyama’s brain has the holding capacity of a soaked sponge; most things just bounce right off of it.
Their post-practice meeting is short for once, given that the school year is soon ending. Takeda recites another sentimental speech about the strength of their team, still coming off the high from their recent run at Nationals, then beams at Hinata and Kageyama. “And thank you, you two, for still giving up your time and practicing with us.”
Hinata delightedly cups his neck while Kageyama grumbles a low, “S’not a problem.”
“Come with the others again next time, okay?” Takeda laughs, and then the boys are dismissed.
Hinata changes out of his sweaty clothes at rapid speed and then escapes from the clubroom. His haste is not even entirely caused by a want to fall off Kageyama’s radar, but it’s certainly a bonus when he manages to slip away while the boy is cornered by their junior setter and busy discussing technique.
Acchan is already waiting at the front gate when he emerges from within the school, juggling his music notes and his clarinet case.
“Thanks for coming with me, Shouyou,” he says, as they fall into step. “We’ve got a performance coming up next week and I really needed a new reed.”
“Don’t worry about it, Acchan, I’m super excited!” Hinata chirps, a skip entering his step.
He doesn’t get many chances to visit the shopping center on his own, given that he’s normally preoccupied with his tutoring or the team. His home, also, is so distant and so isolated that trips to the plaza have to be designed as day outings with the entire family in tow, and while most of Nekoma’s members might gawk at him for saying this, downtown Sendai has always felt like an exotic destination.
They catch a late bus which brings them eventually to the hub of the city. Hinata feels vaguely as if he’s entered a portal of some sort; he watches the doors close, cutting away the stagnant view of grassy fields and grounded crows, and when they reopen, it’s to reveal a buzzing central of people winding in and out of shops, the activity seeming to spark in the very atmosphere. There is not a one person not preoccupied with themselves, hurriedly checking their watch or pushing their way through the compacted street, their purchases bumping into whomever they came across. Hinata hops off his bus and almost turns a full circle trying to take it all in, feeling exceptionally unimportant.
“The shopping center should be that way,” Acchan directs them, fiddling with the map on his phone.
“Do you come here a lot, Acchan?” Hinata wants to know. He tries to imagine his friend wandering these roads alone, like a sardine packed into a shiny tin can trying to swim his way out.
“Mm, yeah.” He grimaces. “I always need to buy music notes or new reeds for my clarinet. I wish there was a music shop a little bit closer to us, but that’s asking for too much from such a small town like ours, isn’t it?”
Hinata thinks of the hill he climbs daily to get to school, of how mountainous it feels, or how daunting his middle school had looked from a distance during his very first year. He thinks of the nice auntie from the fruit stall who always gives him free lemons, and the friendly owner of the ramen shop who had memorized his order, and the rows of stores along their shopping street which, while not so grand or busy, were always enough for him to get exactly what he needed. There are many words Hinata would use to describe his town—muted and still and static—but small has never been one of them until now. Something heavy and melancholic slides into his stomach as he ponders the word.
“Yeah, I guess,” he agrees, reluctantly, squinting at the shops stacked atop one another and trying to will the sudden feeling to dissipate.
Luckily he is a boy who has always been easily impressed and even more quickly distracted. The shopping center is an incredible sight no matter how many times he has seen it (which, admittedly, is not many). His enthusiastic chirp of “oooOHHH!” not only takes away all his breath but also the gloom battering his stomach, and he takes off running to join the surge of people with stars in place of his eyes.
The evening is spent plastering his nose to shop windows and fogging them up with his breath, trying to tamper down the longing for everything he sees. Acchan buys them milkshakes from the first fast-food place he finds, and Hinata enthusiastically sucks his down as they window-shop. He makes a mental note to tell Yachi the stationery store was having a sale, sees a pretty heart-shaped necklace he thinks his mother would like, and nervously dodges students in uniforms in case any of them were from rival volleyball teams.
They eventually reach the music store. Acchan becomes absorbed in a stand of music sheets when they’ve only just stepped foot inside, so Hinata bides his time eyeing the shops on the opposing side of the floor.
His gaze lands on the ASICS sign in the distance, and it brings his thoughts to one person.
“Kageyama was insufferable at practice today,” he tells his friend.
Acchan mumbles, distracted, “Hmm?”
“He was yelling at everyone. You’d think he’d cut the team some slack, when we just came back from Nationals and all. I feel like he’s worse now than he was before the tournament, which makes no sense. Don’t you think, Acchan?”
“Mm…”
He sucks his milkshake for a moment, lost in thought, then says, “He doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
Acchan is rifling through papers, clearly detached from the conversation. “Who?”
“Kageyama.”
“What about Kageyama?”
“Kageyama doesn’t have a girlfriend,” Hinata repeats. “He told me so. He’d probably be a terrible boyfriend anyway. I think he wants to marry a volleyball if he could.”
His friend looks up finally, and taps his chin. “I think I heard there’s a girl in class two who likes him.”
Hinata frowns, chewing on the tip of his straw when he’s reminded of this. “Yeah, but, she hasn’t made her move or anything. I don’t think he knows her, or maybe he doesn’t like her.” He has no actual basis for thinking this, but, “That’s probably it.”
Acchan frowns at this but says nothing. He finally delves deeper into the shop and Hinata dutifully follows, taking in all of the instrumental displays and the composers plastered on the walls. There’s a rack of CDs in one corner and he briefly wonders what Tsukishima is always listening to in those big headphones of his; if a miracle happened and they somehow kept in touch after graduation, a CD might make a nice birthday gift, Hinata thinks.
Then he presses on, unable to completely abandon their previous conversation. “So that doesn’t explain why he’s always ditching us.”
Acchan seems confused. “Who?”
“Kageyama.” He pronounces each syllable of the name separately. “It doesn’t explain why he never wants to hang out when we invite him. It’s the whole socially recluse thing, isn’t it?”
His mind briefly ponders the alternative—that Kageyama was tired of being around them—and has to physically shake the thought from his head.
“He could still have a girlfriend, we don’t know,” his friend insists.
Hinata is a bit annoyed though he knows it’s an unfair notion. He masks the feeling by holding his milkshake cup against his ear and giving it a shake, satisfied when he hears sloshing inside, then reiterates, “He told me he doesn’t.”
“Hmm.” Acchan doesn’t respond to this, again, distracted once more but this time by the box of reeds he’s considering in his hands. Hinata leaves him to concentrate on his purchase, taking a sip of his milkshake when he decides the argument’s been won and that Kageyama was simply a social hermit who’d never learned the conventions of society or proper phone etiquette. Acchan shakes his head, puts down the box, picks up another, then says absentmindedly, “She could be a secret girlfriend?”
Hinata promptly chokes on his drink.
Kageyama is yelling again.
Hinata catches Yamaguchi’s puzzled look but doesn’t have an explanation either.
Recently Kageyama has been falling back into old habits he had tried hard to kick during his time at Karasuno, always correcting his teammates and expecting only the very best. Hinata wonders if perhaps he’s secretly still dissatisfied, that they had not won the national tournament when it had been their last chance; it still stings for Hinata too and he won’t lie if asked about it. But it’s no secret that Kageyama had received several offers to play professionally following graduation, since even before they had solidified their spot as the Miyagi representatives this year, so it’s a wonder what’s caused this sudden perfectionist streak to come about—and for a team that was no longer even his.
Hinata keeps one eye trained on the court and on the setter, in case Kageyama reaches his tipping point and he needs to step in to save their juniors. The other is focused on Yachi as they carry on their conversation.
“A part-time job?” she repeats, surprised.
“Just for a little bit,” Hinata assures her. He’s absentmindedly rolling a volleyball over his head. “I want to get my mom a really nice gift for Valentine’s Day this year, since my dad’s gonna be out of town.”
Hinata had seen in his mother a sort of strength he hadn’t before, watching her help his father pack for his work conference with a pleasant smile. Deep down, he had known, she was incredibly disappointed that the trip would extend past the romantic holiday and she could not celebrate this year with her husband. The idea had come to him then.
“I saw this necklace at the mall, really girly and shaped like a heart,” he tells Yachi. “I think my mom would like it, but there’s no way I can afford it with just my allowance.”
Yachi frowns, but mostly in sympathy. “Did you find a job yet?”
“Yeah, I think so!” He digs his phone from his pocket, then finds the most recent photo saved into his picture gallery: a quaint coffee shop tucked in between two taller buildings, with flowers in the windowsills and wind chimes hanging by the door. “Aone-san messaged me the other day, wanting to know if I had my plans yet for after graduation and all. I told him I was looking for work, and he told Futakuchi-san, and Futakuchi-san said he has a sister who has a boyfriend who’s the manager at a coffee shop downtown that’s looking for workers.”
“That sounds really nice.” Yachi smiles briefly, then is serious once more. “What about practice?”
“Mm, I’ll still come. I’ll probably just divide my time. Maybe every other day at each place?”
She is slow to respond to this. First her gaze trails towards the court, where Kageyama is glaring again at their first-year middle blocker and the poor boy looks blue in the face from the intensity, then back towards Hinata with her bottom lip caught under her teeth. Rather than speaking what she seems to want to say, however, she worries, “Are you sure you won’t burn yourself out?”
“No way! I’m full of energy, Yachi-san!” He laughs, spreading his legs when he leaps into the air for good measure.
She doesn’t seem convinced, but her following words are overshadowed when they’re startled by a commotion at center court. They look to find that Tsukishima and Kageyama suddenly have each other by the collars and seem to be exchanging heated words. Hinata yelps and wastes no time bounding over to try and nullify the argument, so Yachi is forced to let him go.
“Hey, what’s happening here?” he demands, marching up with considerable swagger despite his height. He places the volleyball against his hip, hoping it adds to the intimidating aura. “You’re scaring our kiddos!”
Tsukishima is the first to let go, but sneers, “I’m just telling the King what he doesn’t want to hear: that we’re all sick of his attitude.”
“T-Tsukki was just trying to help,” Yamaguchi backs him. Most of the juniors are peeking out from behind him, comforted by his height.
Hinata looks pointedly at Kageyama. “Well?”
The setter is slower to let go but eventually does, throwing back Tsukishima with a scowl. He doesn’t meet Hinata’s eyes or acknowledge that he had been spoken to at all, but instead shoves his way past the blond, and they all watch him stomp out the gym doors without looking back. Hinata rolls his eyes, mutters a quick, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” to his juniors, then follows after the setter.
The air outside is cool and even more so in his sweat-soaked practice clothes, but Hinata barely registers the frost when he had stepped into it with a purpose; he simply follows the figure he can see rampaging in the distance, hollering after him, “Kageyama, stop! You’re under arrest!”
When Kageyama doesn’t stop, he whips the volleyball at his head.
It lands with a satisfying thunk, and Hinata only sniggers when he hears “Stupid Hinata, I’m gonna kill you!” snarled in the near distance. Then Kageyama is running at him at full-speed, eyes ablaze with the visible urge to destroy, and Hinata fights every flight response in his body to keep his feet firmly planted on the pavement.
“That’s what you get for not listening to me!” he squawks, dodging the claw reaching for his hair.
Kageyama scoffs, whilst still looking for an opening. “And why would I listen to you?”
“Well, no one else is going to talk to you, are they?” Hinata replies, very matter-of-fact. “Not when you’ve been acting like that.”
Kageyama is stunned enough by his response that he allows his arm to fall away limply at his side. Hinata feels a bit superior—it’s not often he’s able to one-up Kageyama into silence—but tries not to let the smugness show on his face.
“Now,” he says, in his most patient voice, “do you want to tell me what’s been going on?”
Kageyama recovers from his slip quickly, the glare sliding back into place.
Hinata tries not to falter under it, tries to pretend the hair on his neck had not stood up. “Y-You’ve been scaring the first-years half to death, you know!” he continues bravely. “The least you can do is explain yourself!”
Kageyama’s tongue meets the roof of his mouth and he looks away, searing a hole into the gym wall. There’s a startled noise from inside and it sounds like several bodies fall away from the window at once, desperate not to be seen. Realizing that they have an audience, however, seems to mellow him somewhat; his fingernails are still digging into his palms but he expels some of his breath, his shoulders sloping as a result. And then, in a calm voice that he seems strained to achieve, he says, “We’re graduating.”
“Uhh.” Hinata blinks consecutively. “Yeah? We’ve always known that?”
“I didn’t.”
“You…” His mouth tugs into a frown. “You didn’t know this entire year that you would be graduating at the end of it?”
Kageyama snakes out a hand and sandwiches Hinata’s cheeks between his fingers, grinding his face to pulp as he seethes, “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”
“I-I’m not!” The words dribble out like mush from his smashed lips. He’s trying his hardest to wrestle free. “I just don’t get it! Don’t blame me just because you’re zoned out like all the time, Spaciyama!”
“That’s not what I—!” Kageyama growls, ragged and impatient, then retracts his hand in a sudden move. Hinata spirals from the loss of force, and when his head is on right, Kageyama is already stomping his way around. “Forget it,” he huffs, around his clenched jaw. “That’s not what I meant.”
Hinata follows. “Then what did you mean?”
He is given no answer, though Kageyama begins stomping harder with purpose.
“At least tell me why you’ve been terrorizing the first-years.”
“I haven’t been terrorizing them.”
Hinata grins at getting a reaction. “Yes, you have. You’ve been stomping around like some fire-breathing Kageyama monster, with the devil horns and everything. Like grawr!” He makes a show of pulling out the claws as a visual to the sound effect, growling up into Kageyama’s face.
“I haven’t been…” One pointed look clams him right back up. His mouth twists and he seems to struggle mentally, searching for the right thing to say, before blurting out, “I haven’t been that bad, have I?”
Hinata pats his arm. “It’s okay, it’s nothing you can’t bounce back from. Just buy everyone pork buns after practice and I’m sure you’ll be forgiven. I’ll take three.”
“You’ll take my fist in your face.”
Hinata ducks. “You’ll already be buying them anyway!”
“Oi.” They hear a drawl from inside the gym, undoubtedly Tsukishima’s. “I’m hearing a lot of nonsense and detect no brain cells being used. You two just about done out there? We would like to wrap up this practice sometime this century.”
“Just a sec!” Hinata hollers back. “Kageyama was just promising he’ll never raise his voice at anyone ever again!”
“I am not—what are you—get off me, stupid!”
“Pinky promise,” Hinata insists, advancing upon him with his own outstretched. There’s a devilish gleam in his eyes that speaks of how much he’s enjoying this.
Kageyama tries to escape but finds himself caged against the wall no more than two backward steps later, which is when Hinata pounces, forcefully prying his hand from his back and hooking their fingers together.
Yamaguchi’s face appears from around the gymnasium doors then, catching them in their awkward and pretzel-shaped fight over their fingers, and bites down on a knowing smile.
“Tsukki’s getting really impatient, guys,” he tells them. “And I think Yachi-san is worried.”
Hinata skips inside to beam about the room and reassure the team that he had handled the Kageyama situation, while the setter slouches in with storm clouds brewing and snatches his kneepads from the sidelines as if they had wronged him and he planned to fling them into the sun. The mood is different, though; everyone can tell this is not an angry Kageyama, but a rumpled and ‘typically annoyed by his partner’s antics’ kind of Kageyama, which is someone they can handle and also find amusement in. A collective sigh of relief sweeps across the team, and Hinata secretly flashes Yachi two thumbs-up so she’ll stop looking near tears.
They walk to Sakanoshita’s afterwards, the entire team together. Kageyama stiffly offers to treat, after Hinata prods him enough times. The first-years seem discomforted by the prospect until they see the third-years and even the second-years heckle him all the way into the shop, and this is when the atmosphere is finally and completely cleansed.
Hinata sits brightly on the store steps and bites into his steaming bun, asking around his mouthful, “Where’re my other two?”
“In the gutter with the rest of your shit,” comes the reply.
“So vulgar, Kageyama!” But he’s laughing, falling back on one hand so he can stare up at the sky and the dissolving sunset. He tells him, “I’m gonna be working for a little bit at a coffee shop downtown. You should come by. I’ll try to get you free coffee if I can.”
Kageyama considers this, before his shoulders rise up to his ears. “Mm, nah,” he says, but then adds, “I don’t like coffee.”
So Hinata doesn’t mind so much, being turned down, because at least he’s given a reason this time.
“You still coming to practice?”
“Of course!”
Kageyama flashes him his constipated version of a smile which looks more like a smirk, and it sends something fluttery down Hinata’s spine because with his mouth upturned in such a way and the sunset gleaming in his eyes, Kageyama almost looks like he’s pleased that he’ll be around. Hinata buries himself into his meat bun so he’ll have something else to focus on other than how his stomach feels bubbly and itchy and filled up on something that was not exactly tangible but felt just as solid.
“Great, that’s just what we need. Hinata hopped up on caffeine.”
Startled, Hinata cranes back his neck to see an upside-down Tsukishima sneering down at him.
“You pickin’ a fight, Jerkishima?” he retorts crabbily, but it’s more like an automatic response and the argument fizzles before it can even begin.
Yachi gingerly steps out of the shop after this to join them on the steps, and Hinata more than welcomes her distraction. Her presence attracts their new manager like a moth following a flame, and the rest of the first-years file out after her like they were afraid to move as anything less than a complete pack. Pretty soon the entire team has swarmed at the front of Sakanoshita’s, some still working through their pork buns and others gorging on the snacks they had bought inside.
“Oi, go home,” Ukai calls, but his heart’s not really in it and perhaps even he can tell, because they can hear him muttering something about growing soft with age as he flips through his copy of Shounen Jump.
One of the underclassmen scoops a pile of slush into his gloved hands and sneaks it down the back of their unsuspecting libero, whose chips go flying a mile into the air when he shrieks and scatter over the front of the shop. Laughter erupts, followed quickly by pandemonium. Their first-year setter tries to pop open a can of soda only to find that someone had shaken it behind his back; it sprays at least three of their teammates down the front of their coats and gets a sizable chunk of Yachi’s hair. One of the boys tackles another and they’re both last seen disappearing into a mound of snow. Tsukishima tries to sit apart from the chaos but is pulled into it when he becomes the target of a stray snowball intended for Yamaguchi, and then a complete war breaks out between the murderous middle blocker and anyone in his path. Someone chokes on a bun unnoticed, someone else snorts soda up their nose, and someone else tries to climb up the shop roof to see if the snow was soft enough to break their fall.
“Go home!” Ukai hollers again, this time with actual bite.
Kageyama chomps down on his pork buns, steadfastly ignoring the entire commotion.
And Hinata looks out at it all filled up on an intoxicating kind of happiness, thinking to himself that if time stopped right now, everything about this moment remaining just this way forever, then he wouldn’t really mind.
Hinata knows these streets were beautiful once. The trees were once lush and green as they twined into the sky along the borders of the promenade, and the burst of color brought something vibrant to a street otherwise like any other. During the festive season, they drew visitors from across the nation for the famed Pageant of Starlight, those same trees decked in such dazzling lights that even stars could not compare.
But there’s something charming about them even now, the branches bold and naked as they waited to bud in the upcoming spring. They would have a long wait still, the poor things, Hinata thinks.
“Hinata, are you just going to look out the window the entire time?” Yamaguchi doesn’t sound annoyed, but simply amused.
Hinata's been lost in the branches for some time now, staring at them thinking of missing leaves and cherry blossoms and what it would mean when spring arrived this year. He wonders if it’s possible to miss something before it’s even gone, or to miss something without even knowing exactly what it is he’s missing.
Pulling himself out of the mood, one he’s been falling into too easily these days, he rejoins Yamaguchi in their task of wiping down the coffee cups. “Do you think Yachi-san will visit?” he asks, glumly.
“It’s not that easy hopping on a plane all the time for the other side of the world,” Yamaguchi responds, very light with his words.
Hinata knows this without having to be told. Yachi had not kept it a surprise that she’d been looking into universities abroad and sending in early applications; her palms had been sweaty and useless at practices all of last month, and she’d been embarrassed that her first-year manager candidate had needed to pick up on the slack when she dropped everything she touched. Hinata had laughed and clapped her back and told her not to worry too much. You’re crazy smart, Yachi-san, and I’m sure you’ll get in! The mood feels completely different now that her leaving has actually been confirmed.
He puts down his washcloth and the latte cup he’s been wiping in circles, and sighs.
“You’re doing that a lot these days,” Yamaguchi notes, studying him with some concern. “It’s like the quieter you get, the louder and angrier Kageyama gets. You two have a weird balance.”
Hinata frowns and opens his mouth to ask what Kageyama has to do with him or anything at all, but the tinkling of wind chimes and two very giggly high-school girls provide him with a distraction. Hinata pats down his apron and scurries to join Yamaguchi behind the counter, where they bring coffee orders to life as best as they can. He still struggles to work up a proper foam in his drinks but at least he’s better at latte art than Yamaguchi is (and if he messes up, he can always say he’d designed a volleyball).
“Aww, a snowman,” the girls coo, when he brings over their coffee.
He rubs his neck, sheepish. “It’s actually two volleyballs stacked on top of each other.”
He hadn’t said it meaning to be funny but the two girls burst into giggles anyway, and he’s flushed with pleasure to think he’d made such pretty girls laugh. Yamaguchi is squinting at him when he returns to the counter, trying not to smile too wide.
He puts up his hands defensively. “Wh-what?”
“Nothing. Just…” His mouth twitches when he fights a smile; it ends up looking more like a smirk and that’s probably Tsukishima’s influence. “I just feel like you’ve become really flirty since starting third-year.”
Hinata burns. He decides right then that there couldn’t possibly be any word in any language out there more embarrassing than flirty. “Wh-what! I am not!”
“Oh, yeah? Then what do you call it when you and Kage—"
They are interrupted once again, this time by their manager peering in from the back to ask questions about afternoon sales and the next week’s hours. The boys stand at attention, even though their boss is kind and smiling and not a rigid man by any means. But that only fuels Hinata to work that much harder, so as not to take advantage of his kindness. And he wants to leave a good impression on Aone’s captain’s sister’s boyfriend in case word ever makes its way back to the giant.
Work ends when the sun begins to set. They hang up their aprons, pass on their duties to the night duo, and depart for the bus stop.
Yamaguchi’s bus arrives first, the headlights glinting like fireflies in the growing darkness; he lives much closer to their shop and it had not been difficult convincing him to join Hinata in his coffee shop endeavors. Hinata, meanwhile, needs to catch a bus back to school, where he leaves his bike waiting at the racks, then pedal back home over the mountain. It’s an inconvenient part of the job, but he doesn’t mind too much since he’s working towards a goal, toiling away for his mother, and he doesn’t have to go at this job alone.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Yamaguchi worries, pulling down his window so he can stick his head out the bus.
Hinata waves him off cheerily. “Don’t worry about me! I’ll tell Tsukishima you went home if I see him.”
Yamaguchi’s bus disappears around a corner and Hinata soon boards his own, finding a free seat close to the back where he can rest his head against the cool window and gaze at the scenery flickering by. Hazy lights and vibrant colors change soon into a dull green monotony, asphalt becoming dirt roads, and Hinata ponders the dewy feeling in his stomach like he’s coming home. He wonders if Yachi will miss this scenery when she’s far away. He wonders if Kageyama will miss it, when he makes the move to big and scary Osaka.
His bike is the only one still on the compound when he arrives to pick it up. He swings by the gym but the lights are already off, practice over for the day, and it’s with another sigh that he kicks away the stand of his bike and begins to wheel it away in the opposite direction.
Then Kageyama is suddenly standing in front of him.
He almost leaves his skin, he’s so startled. “Geh!”
Kageyama seems annoyed by the response. “It’s just me, stupid.”
“I can see it’s you. Don’t just show up out of nowhere!”
“How is it nowhere when we’re inside the school?”
“You—ugh, forget it.” Hinata lets up, shaking his head like he’s trying to shake the very fight out of himself. Some arguments with Kageyama are as pointless as those dress-up sticker dolls Natsu really likes, good maybe for just one use but not much else. And being just ten steps away from the gymnasium kind of left him open for unexpected teammate encounters anyway.
“I guess practice ran long?” he presumes, looking around as if expecting more of his teammates to begin popping up from behind bushes. They’re surrounded by darkness and the harsh, washed-out grey of the courtyard lights beaming from above.
Kageyama shrugs with just one shoulder. “Not really. I just stayed late to get some extra practice in. Been so busy helping the team that I haven’t had time for my own training.”
Hinata smirks. “Helping?” he goads. “Or terrorizing?”
He glares. It’s not fully vicious or even truly upset, but mostly just embarrassed and he’s likely thinking of their conversation from a week ago. Hinata knows this when he slides his gaze to the ground and huffs, non-threatening, “Shut up, stupid.”
Hinata pretends like he’s trying to disguise his sniggers but really he’s making sure they’re just loud enough that Kageyama’s face turns all red and sweaty, and he remembers when they had been first-years and they’d been standing here just like this, Kageyama’s face all red and sweaty as he explained to him why setters were the coolest. Back then, they couldn’t even accept each other as teammates, let alone partners.
To be honest, Hinata’s still not sure when exactly Kageyama started seeing him as a partner. He’s stingy with compliments and never tells him good job for the things he does well, even when he’s being practically begged for it. But Spring High this year, when they had won their finals match, Kageyama had turned to him flushed from the heat and the game and the rush of victory, and brought him in one-armed for a sloppy hug against his side; he’d been gross and sweaty, they both had, but Hinata had laughed into his chest feeling strangely vindicated. And when the offers to go pro had started rolling in, he’s certain he was the first person Kageyama had come to. So he’s not sure when Kageyama first began thinking of them this way but he knows that they definitely are—partners.
“Hey, Kageyama?” he asks then. “When are you leaving?”
Somehow he’s never asked the question before, even though it drifts through his mind on the daily.
Kageyama seems surprised, likely by the clunky transition. He frowns. “I won’t know yet until they send me my ticket. But it’ll probably be right after graduation.”
Hinata nods, hollow. “Oh.”
He’s not sure what else he expected.
Kageyama continues looking at him strangely but doesn’t ask about the sudden interest. Instead he digs his hands into his coat pockets, then turns around. “Come on,” he says, over his shoulder, and at Hinata’s blank look, “I’ll walk you to the usual spot. Or are you planning to stand here all night?”
He starts walking without waiting for a response, and Hinata has to blink the fog out of his mind before scurrying after him, his bike making a noise like a grater as it rolls over gravel and announces his presence. He stares at Kageyama’s back, imagining the jersey he’s wearing underneath his coat with Karasuno stamped across the back, and tries to picture another name there, another team. It feels unnatural and like fiction, like something he’ll have to see for himself first to actually believe.
When Hinata finally falls into step, just outside the courtyard, Kageyama throws him a quick look. “How was work?”
“S’alright. Kinda busy when I first got there, then it died down a little by the end. But that’s been the usual so far.”
He squints at him, trying to figure something out. “You smell like…”
“Wh-what?” Hinata huffs, feeling self-conscious. He wonders if he should shuffle over a little, not stand so close that their arms keep bumping like this and Kageyama can get such a good whiff of him. “Keep in mind I just finished a five-hour shift, so you can’t expect me to smell like roses! And you’re probably all sweaty from practice, too!”
“Settle down, dumbass, I didn’t say you smell bad.” He rolls his eyes, and when they land back on Hinata, they’re glinting silver from the reflection of the moonlight. “You smell like, I don’t know, cappuccinos and caramel. It’s good.”
“O-Oh.” Not knowing what to say to that, Hinata simply sticks his nose into his armpit and takes a long sniff, but he doesn’t smell anything besides his fading deodorant. Kageyama must have been part bloodhound or something. He’s not going to contest him on the matter, though.
“What about you?” Kageyama asks then, staring determinedly at the road.
“Huh?”
It feels like his head hasn’t been screwed on right since he’d run into the boy back at the gym; he feels fuzzy and disoriented by every little thing, much too easily taken off guard. Kageyama usually doesn’t like it when he’s zoning out like this and it’s usually grounds for an argument, but he’s being weirdly placid about the matter right now.
He simply explains himself. “When are you leaving?”
“…Oh.”
The familiar wrench of dread ices the pit of his stomach, like any time the topic of entrance exams and universities and the future is brought up. He knows he’s sharing this sentiment with every student in the nation right now, waiting on results and daydreaming about a desolate life if they were bad.
“I don’t know yet,” he admits. “I’m still waiting for my results. Though I’ll probably stay here as long as I can before I have to go, ‘cause my mom and Natsu can’t run the house without me probably.”
Kageyama doesn’t say anything to this, which begs to wonder why he had even asked. He usually at least will grunt to acknowledge that he’s heard the answer. It makes Hinata feel restless somehow, like he needs to fill the silence Kageyama had created. He thinks of what Yamaguchi had said that afternoon about their strange balance: that when one of them was silent, the other one was usually noisier to compensate.
“I looked at a school in Osaka,” he admits, hesitantly.
Objectively he knows there’s no need for him to feel embarrassed—he’s been looking at schools since way before Kageyama had begun debating team offers—but the feeling crashes into the pit of his stomach anyway. He is reminded of first-year and always being taken off the court when Kageyama couldn’t play, like he’s not capable of anything if his partner is not there with him.
“Are you going?” Kageyama asks, peering at the top of his head.
“If they accept me… maybe?” He tries to gloss over this new topic with a shrug, even though he had been the one to bring it up. “I probably won’t get accepted.”
“Idiot. You studied really hard.”
“You realize you basically counteracted your own compliment. Who’s the idiot now?”
Kageyama glares and Hinata grins up at him, innocent and blinding.
He had studied really hard, though. In middle school studying had always seemed like a hopeless case; most of his friends were just as terrible at it, and he had spent most of his free time hunting down people to send him tosses, trying to recruit more boys to the team, or looking up volleyball plays all on his own. But these past three years, he’s had Yachi’s patient guidance and even Tsukishima and Yamaguchi’s reluctant help, and he’s had Kageyama next to him pompously circling things in his workbooks even when his answers were usually wrong half the time. He’d like to think it had all amounted to something.
“Well!” He throws his head back and lets out a long sigh, watching his foggy breath climb up like smoke billowing from a chimney. “I don’t really care as long as I get in somewhere. All this waiting around is killing me, it’s like this ticking time bomb just waiting to explode.” He squints at Kageyama, muttering, “I guess you wouldn’t know what that’s like, you professional volleyball bastard.”
Kageyama gives him this look that’s like a mix between sympathy and his usual smirk; he mostly just looks constipated and Hinata means to tell him so, except he is beaten to it.
“I know what it’s like,” Kageyama says, shrugging. “I want you to get in.”
Hinata’s bike jumps over a pebble and his startle reaction to it is the only reason he doesn’t gape.
Does Kageyama mean he wants Hinata to come to Osaka with him? Or is he simply wishing him luck in all his college endeavors? It’s not strange or unnatural to hope that someone you know would follow you to a foreign city, to not be alone for the transition. It’s strange and unnatural for Kageyama, though.
“I-If…” Hinata begins, then lets his teeth gnaw at his lip before trying again. “If I go to Osaka, I’m gonna bother you a buttload.”
Kageyama rolls his eyes, but it’s impossible to tell what it means.
“I’ll go to the stands where you’re practicing and boo you really loudly in front of all your new teammates.”
That finally succeeds in winning him a smile—just a twitch at the corner of Kageyama’s mouth, but he is immensely relieved to see it. Kageyama doesn’t think he’s presumptuous for thinking they could move onwards together; the thought feels bubbly, like the pop of a drinks can or like soda fizzing over the rim of its container, pressure lifting in a split second.
“I’d have you thrown out on your ass,” Kageyama says.
“I’d charm the guards!” Hinata counters, giggling.
“It’s their job not to get charmed by you.”
“They can’t help it if I’m just so lovable.”
At this, Kageyama scoffs but says nothing. Amusement glints in his eyes, and Hinata catches himself wondering if it means something that he had chosen not to contest him on this. He imagines doing this, this back and forth the two have always shared, but in a place where they were far away from everyone they know and everywhere they know, comforted by the familiarity of each other and their arguments. An itch begins somewhere underneath his ribcage.
“Okay, then! Guess I’ll just have to get in!” he decides. His voice is loud as if he’s trying to drown out the noisy feeling that had sprung in his chest.
Kageyama nods. “Good.”
Good, Hinata repeats, just for himself.
It’s an addicting word.
It’s not long after this when they reach the point where their paths diverge. The usual spot Kageyama will normally leave him is the pass where Hinata’s bike trail begins, just at the foot of the mountain. Something Hinata can’t figure out is when exactly this became the usual spot. In first year he and Kageyama hardly ever walked home together, and certainly not without the whole team in tow. But walking together has become a staple in their routine over the past two years, Kageyama bringing him farther and farther each day until they had permanently reached the point where they absolutely have to separate. Hinata has never had the courage to ask where Kageyama lives or whether he goes out of his way to bring him to their usual spot.
“I’ll see you at the next practice, yeah?” Hinata asks. He squeezes his handlebars, knowing separation is coming.
“Mm.” Kageyama nods, brushing bangs from his eyes as he does.
A chilly wind cuts through the pass and pulls shivers from their bodies, both boys retreating into their coats and waiting for the icy breeze to settle. Kageyama’s mussed hair falls back over his eyes again, and he impatiently blinks bangs from his lashes.
Hinata stares, chiding him, “You need a haircut, Kageyama-kun. No reporter’s gonna want to take your picture when you’ve got that falling all over your face.”
Kageyama rolls his eyes. “No reporter takes pictures of someone who’s not on the starting line.”
The yet remains unspoken but implied.
“You don’t know.” Hinata’s bike rattles when he pops the stand, and he places his hands on his hips in a self-important way. “They’ll probably take team pictures and stuff. And you’ll have your ID card made, probably, once you’re officially a teammate. Kenma says people used to call him Sadako because his bangs were so dark and long; is that what you want?”
“I don’t care what people call me.”
“Liar,” Hinata calls him out, remembering all those bruises from first-year when King had accidentally slipped from his lips. “You might not care, but I’m the one who’ll have to tell people Sadako was my partner.”
“Haircuts are annoying,” he grumbles. “They always want to style my hair but I like it how it is.”
Hinata cards his fingers through his bangs, scrutinizing his forehead and the way his entire face seems to change the more of it was visible. “A few inches off your bangs won’t kill you. Have some guts, Kageyama, don’t let them bully you into being fashionable.”
He grins, all pearly teeth and curling lips, as if it would distract from his poorly disguised jibe. Kageyama is scowling now, seemingly weighing the benefits of going into an attack on this deserted dirt path; a wrinkle splits his forehead into two, right at the dip where his eyebrows meet, and Hinata is flushed with gratification upon seeing it. Riling up Kageyama has become a favorite hobby.
“If you keep making faces like that, your face’ll get stuck that way,” he teases, in the lilting voice he uses whenever he and Natsu are trying their hardest to annoy each other.
With a laugh, he sticks his thumb over the crinkle and forcibly smooths it out, stroking the skin there as an added measure to ensure that it was surfaced and that Kageyama didn’t appear as if he were plotting a grizzly murder. He continues stroking, ironing out lines and staring at the flex of his temples, the way his brows ease back into position and his lashes flutter as a guard against the winter wind. Watching his forehead flatten out under the command of his thumb pulls a pleased hum from the back of his throat.
Then Kageyama says, his voice low and rumbly, “What are you doing?”
Hinata chokes mid-hum into silence. His thumb stills over exposed flesh as a sobering gush of embarrassment cascades down his spine.
You’ve become really flirty since starting third-year.
Yamaguchi’s words from that afternoon strike a chord. He looks up into stormy blue eyes and feels his face burn, realizing that this is another boy he’s got under his thumb and he’s flirting with him, flirting with Kageyama.
“I’m making you look less like a serial killer,” he blurts out. “You’re welcome.”
“Rude dumbass,” Kageyama grunts, and flicks him across the forehead for good measure.
Hinata retracts his hands so he can rub at the sharp sting, glaring up at the setter for not holding back even an ounce of his power. But it’s saved, the moment is saved, and if Kageyama thinks something is strange about the passing incident then he doesn’t let on. Hinata is ever grateful that Kageyama’s brain receives signals through a volleyball and that he would probably never understand what Hinata had been doing, feeling him out under his thumb and thinking that he looked nice with his bangs pushed back.
But it’s Kageyama.
With a hammering heart, he yells after the retreating setter, just nonsense about his jerk tendencies because that’s what’s normal for them. Kageyama doesn’t turn back but he aimlessly waves a hand into the air as if to say that he had heard but he didn’t really care, and Hinata sticks out his tongue for his own fulfillment before picking up his bike and starting up the mountain trail towards home.
At the top of the hill, he looks back for the distant, muddled form of his teammate and has to remind himself, aching down to his very bones, It’s Kageyama.
His phone is out. It shouldn’t be out in the middle of his shift, even if his manager had stepped out for lunch, and Hinata knows he’s being a terrible employee; chin balanced on the countertop, relentlessly playing with the keypad in front of him, his foot tapping an impatient beat. But Kageyama is taking twice as long to reply to him than he normally would.
Hey, I’m working today. You should come by! And then, as an added measure, You don’t have to get coffee if you don’t want. We have hot chocolate too! Or something else. If you want! I don’t know. Yeah.
Not his most eloquent message ever sent, but it had gotten the job done. Hinata wouldn’t have second-guessed it at all on any other occasion, really, except that Tsukishima just will not stop snickering and it’s got his face steadily climbing in temperature.
“Sh-shut up!” He snatches a few straws from the dispenser next to his elbow and tosses them at the blond. They scatter across the floor before they even reach the boy, and Hinata knows he’ll have to clean them up but he absolutely won’t do it with his nemesis sitting right there.
Tsukishima’s smirk broadens. “I might have to knock a star off my rating for this abysmal service.”
“You were laughing at me, jerk!”
“You’d think you’d get used to it after all this time.”
Yamaguchi giggles, smiling apologetically at Hinata but not making a move to step in. At least he picks up a few of the straws closest to him, even though he had started his break when Tsukishima had come in so he could sit with him as he sipped his coffee. Their table is round and especially tiny, and their legs can be seen under it creating what looks like a forest of gangly trees.
Seeing Tsukishima come in, and knowing Yachi had plans for dinner together with her mother tonight, Hinata had wondered whether Kageyama would go to practice today if none of the other third-years were going to be there. It had seemed like such an obvious thing, inviting him to the shop—if he would only respond.
His phone pings then and he looks at it hurriedly, but it’s only Nishinoya checking in, telling him to call that night so they could catch up. He’s happy, of course, to be hearing from his dear upperclassman, but still can’t help the sigh that rushes from his mouth.
“What’s wrong?” Yamaguchi asks. “Kageyama can’t make it?”
“He hasn’t answered yet.” He quickly taps out a reply to Nishinoya promising he’d call, then checks his other messages to find nothing new. “Maybe he really went to practice.”
“I’m sure the team will love that,” Tsukishima drawls.
Hinata frowns, feeling strangely defensive. “Hey, he’s gotten better about the whole yelling thing. He hasn’t done it any more than usual since last week! And I didn’t really get it, but he seemed to have a reason.”
Yamaguchi taps his chin. “I don’t think Kageyama is taking the idea of graduation very well.”
Hinata’s eyebrows squiggle together and he begins to ask him what he means, except his phone pings again and it’s finally Kageyama this time. He blinks at the screen, at the curt and impersonal I’m busy staring back at him. This is at least a step up, he supposes. If Kageyama had texted him nah he might just have thrown his phone into the coffee grinder and turned the damn machine on.
With another resounding sigh, he crams his phone into his pocket and runs around the counter to begin scooping up the straws, Tsukishima’s infuriating sniggers be damned.
“Kageyama’s not coming,” he tells them, keeping his tone even.
Yamaguchi waves a hand about. “The chances of him coming were really slim anyway. He doesn’t even go to places that don’t require a whole bus ride to get to. You’re just really obsessed with inviting him out everywhere.”
“O-Obsessed?” Hinata repeats. His voice comes out shriller than he had meant for it to be. “I am not!”
He is met with no resistance to this, verbally at least. But Yamaguchi presses his fingers to his mouth to hide the beginnings of a smile, and Tsukishima tips his coffee cup against his lips but the sneer lands its mark through his side-along glance anyway. Hinata keeps his eyes on the floor as if picking up straws was a task that required the utmost concentration.
On the bus back to school that night, Hinata lets himself finally think about this.
Though he wouldn’t call it an obsession, it does sometimes feel like there are ants crawling under his skin, every time Kageyama turns him down these days. Graduation is one week closer now than it had been last he’d thought of it, and the chances to see Kageyama, to see all his friends, have become slim and fleeting ever since adulthood came knocking. He hasn’t seen Izumi and Kouji since the break, he’d lost Acchan to the clarinet ever since the boy had been scouted by a music college, Yachi would eventually fly away to unreachable places, Tsukishima and Yamaguchi were soon also going their own ways, and Kageyama…
Last night Hinata had jolted awake sweating through the chill, his stomach still churning from the vision he’d witnessed in his dreams: pink and white cherry blossoms strewn about, students laughing, his diploma resting heavy in his hands, a happy scene. But when he’d tried to find Kageyama, he had been nowhere. No matter how many people he stopped, questioned, begged, no one could point him to Kageyama at all. And then he had found Yachi, who had told him, blubbering through her tears, that a plane had landed in front of the school and Kageyama had gotten on it. Without a word, without even a goodbye, Kageyama had disappeared behind the emblazoned Suntory logo and flown away to faraway Osaka.
It wasn’t something he could tell Tsukishima or Yamaguchi about; they would just laugh, call him obsessed and weird maybe. Hinata already feels like it himself, having these sorts of dreams about a teammate that left his bones aching for hours after.
Realistically he knows why Kageyama has to leave. He knows that Kageyama is, above all else, a boy born from ambition. He wants to be the best, and of all the teams vying for his loyalty, Osaka had offered him the best. It could be worse, Hinata figures; he could have gone instead to warm and tidal Hiroshima, perhaps lost to the distance forever.
Next to the bike racks, while struggling for the keys to his lock, Hinata pulls out his phone and taps out a message. You still busy?
The gym is empty and quiet. There’s no way to know if Kageyama had come to practice, and for a moment Hinata expects to turn around and find the boy standing there just like he had last week. But there’s no one there, the compound deathly silent and almost lonely, so unlike how he’s used to seeing it.
With a sigh, he adds another line to his message. I’m leaving the school.
The response arrives quickly this time, almost taking him by surprise.
Kageyama (9:13 PM): wait at the usual spot
Hinata stares at it, blinking quickly to make sure he’s seeing right. His heartbeat stutters in tune to the chain of his bike as he pushes it out of the courtyard, veering quickly towards the pass under his mountain trail where Kageyama often dropped him off after practice.
What did this mean? Did this mean Kageyama was coming out to meet him? He never came when he was called, but then, Hinata hadn’t done the calling this time; it was Kageyama asking to meet up this time.
Something swells inside of him at this thought, something like the jittery sparks of pop rocks candy or the slow ballooning of a parachute, like he’s filled up on some emotion that cannot be contained in his tiny body. His legs itch with the urge to break into a jog, but he keeps them at a dawdle, not wanting Kageyama to think he had run here because he was so eager to be with him.
Hinata is the first to arrive at the pass, but only by several steps. He squints into the dark, wondering if he’d simply missed Kageyama’s figure in the cloak of night, and spies him approaching from a distance dressed in workout gear. He’s bundled in a light windbreaker and his hands are cozy inside the pockets of his running shorts, which end mid-thigh and become a stretch of leggings and sneakers.
“Were you out for a run?” Hinata asks, when he nears.
“After this,” he replies. “I thought I might as well, since I was coming out to meet you anyway.”
“Oh.” So Kageyama had left home specially to come see him after all. He’s pleased. He shouldn’t be, damn it, but he’s pleased. He scuffs at the ground with his toe, hoping the emotion is not too obvious on his face. “So… what did you want to tell me?”
Kageyama blinks back at him. “What do you mean?”
“You told me to wait here for you. Didn’t you want to tell me something?”
He frowns. “You’re the one who texted me.”
“But you’re the one who told me to wait!” he shoots back.
“Because you texted me!” Kageyama barks. It’s like an animal instinct embedded in both of them; if one of them raises their voice, the other will almost involuntarily yell back. “You asked me if I was busy and then told me where you were!”
“Th-that’s because! I just!” The truth is Hinata doesn’t know why he had texted Kageyama those things, or really why he had texted the boy at all. It’s yet another instinct, maybe. “I thought you might have gone to practice, so I was just wondering if you were out late training by yourself again.”
A flimsy excuse, but it seems to have a nullifying effect on Kageyama, who slowly deflates like someone was pressing the volume-down button on his temper. When he speaks again, it’s with a normal tone. “I didn’t. Go to practice, I mean.”
“You said you were busy, though.” Hinata tries not to sound like he’s accusing him of things.
“I was. I had to get some paperwork done and handed in, so I can have my passport made.”
“…Oh.” This unexpected turn to the conversation forms a wrench in his stomach. Hinata can’t remember how many days it’s been since he wasn’t reminded at every turn that Kageyama would be leaving soon. “Why do you need a passport? Osaka is only five hours away by train.”
He hears the press in his voice over the word only, as if he’s trying to put emphasis on it, trying to accent the fact that Kageyama wasn’t going somewhere completely fantastical. He would still be reachable, still grounded and close, only a few steps ahead of Hinata instead of a giant leap away.
“They told me to get one, just in case,” Kageyama explains, shrugging. “Sometimes they go out of the country for matches and stuff.”
Hinata puts his lips together and makes a light humming noise, but says nothing.
“You’re still going, right?” he asks then, his expression intense but unreadable. “To Osaka?”
Hinata’s heartbeat misses a step, then picks itself up into a full throttle. “Yeah,” he hears himself say. “If I make it in I’ll go.”
Kageyama nods. “Good.”
Hearing it for a second time, Hinata wonders what the word means. He wonders whether it means the same thing to Kageyama as it does to him, whether Kageyama also imagines them together inside of a busy cityscape, making sure their eyes never leave one another as they move against the surge of a crowd. Winding through okonomiyaki stalls, losing themselves in shopping arcades, ferry rides in the summer breeze, adventures inside sports complexes, arguments in a dingy apartment, staying together always; he wonders if this is what Kageyama imagines behind the word.
Then he pictures Kageyama falling to one knee on the mountain dirt, looking up at him and asking Will you go to Osaka with me? with his typically blank face—and his face burns.
“If you don’t have anything to say then I’m leaving,” he blurts out, backing up a step. His insides curl like flower petals, snug and so ashamed; he feels utterly perverse, having these kinds of twisted fantasies about another boy, a teammate.
Kageyama seems startled, but nods. “Yeah, sure.”
Hinata kicks away his bike stand and gives himself a running start before swinging onto his seat, pedaling furiously along the bumpy path. He narrowly avoids faceplanting by swerving away from a rock and his bike wobbles, dangerously on the edge of tipping over before he manages to regain his balance, and still he doesn’t stop. Vaguely he registers Kageyama yelling after him, “Slow down, idiot! You’ll fall!”
But he doesn’t slow down. The cool wind whipping against his face is like a splash back to reality. Heartbeat in his fingertips, Hinata thinks to himself that if Kageyama knew the thoughts circling in his mind, the kinds of secret fantasies he’s been having about the boy, he’d probably want him to fall.
There are students milling about behind him, providing him cover. Hinata reaches into his bag with shaking hands, flitting his gaze over his shoulder before pulling out paper from between his books and slapping it against the wall, but fumbles with the roll of tape in his jittery fingers.
Someone taps his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing, I—!” Hinata almost falls to his knees, ready to ask for forgiveness, when he makes contact with familiar blue eyes. It’s Kageyama, frowning at him but mostly seeming confused. “Oh,” Hinata breathes, like he’s not squirming on the inside from the mere sight of the boy. “It’s just you.”
“What are you doing?” he repeats, looking over his shoulder.
“I’m putting up some fliers for the shop.” He points to the flier as way of explanation; it limps from one, unsecured corner, but its pink color scheme cannot hide that it clearly was not meant for a school bulletin board.
Kageyama is quick to point this out. “You’re not allowed to put up things on the bulletin board without permission, dumbass.”
“Th-that’s why I’m doing it secretly! I can’t ask the vice-principal, you know he hates us and he would never say yes. I-If he takes it down, then I’ll just put it back up!”
Kageyama rolls his eyes, but leans over him to peel back the folded corner and ease it against the wall. Hinata finds himself caged between the corridor and the wide expanse of Kageyama’s chest, the fabric of his uniform pressing into his nose and overwhelming him with the scent of deodorant and soap; it doesn’t smell like the cheap convenience store kind Hinata buys to save on funds, but something more potent and lingering. Against his hip, he can feel the light ridges of coins inside Kageyama’s pocket, and briefly wonders whether the boy had been planning to buy milk from the vending machines.
“Well?” Kageyama’s impatient voice scatters these observations. “Are you gonna tape it or not? I’m only holding it for three more seconds and then you’re on your own.”
“R-Right!”
He unrolls the tape and sticks a small length on the corner Kageyama is holding back for him, zoned in on the boy’s perfectly manicured nails. His hands are much bigger than Hinata’s and the difference is stark when they’re side-by-side like this; a brief vision flashes through Hinata’s mind, of Kageyama’s hands on either side of his head and being pressed to the wall by Kageyama’s chest just like this, but in completely different circumstances. He swallows with difficulty.
“You should, uh, you should come!” he says, since nothing else comes to his mind. “To the shop, I mean. At least once! Even Tsukishima’s gone, even though he’s a prickly, antisocial porcupine. And Yachi-san came the other day together with Runa-san—you know, the manager from Johzenji? They shared a strawberry tart and left us a five-star rating!”
Kageyama sighs, stepping back and freeing Hinata from his confines, then glances down the hall with a faraway look in his eyes. “I’ll see,” he says.
Hinata frowns. “That means no.”
Kageyama glares at him. “That means I’ll think about it, dumbass.”
“You don’t think I’ve learned Kageyama-speech by now? I know what I’ll see means!”
“You don’t know anything, Idiot Hinata!” Kageyama barks back, then goes raging down the hall like he had been offended somehow by Hinata not believing his words.
Hinata sticks his tongue out after him, grumbling about touchy setters as he scoops up his bag and escapes the scene before he could be caught by the vice-principal. The pink flier remains behind, advertising a Valentine’s Day promotion for his shop and taped crookedly on one edge of the paper, along with the lingering echoes of two boys and their paltry argument.
The flier is still present on the board by the lunch hour, Hinata is relieved to find. He passes it on his way to the cafeteria, slowing his steps in case he needs to tack up the extra he has folded up in his pocket, but it’s still firmly in place and he gladly skips past it down the hall.
Yamaguchi spies him first and waves him over, moving over to give Hinata room to join him and Tsukishima at the table they had snagged. Hinata will normally eat lunch with Acchan in their classroom, but he’s been practicing through lunch these days for his final high school performance in the music club and Hinata has been gladly cheering him on.
“I thought Yachi-san was coming,” he says, as he joins his teammates.
“She is, she just had something to take care of first,” Yamaguchi assures him.
A body sinks down on his other side, and Hinata is startled to find that it’s Kageyama, whom he hadn’t known would be joining them and had actually been debating whether he should invite himself. The squabble from this morning has already been forgotten—he and Kageyama were usually too busy hopping from argument to argument to hold onto any real grudges—but Hinata still feels strangely nervous being next to him without any notice.
“You’re late,” Yamaguchi notes.
“I got held up by someone,” he replies dismissively, too busy unpacking his lunch and likely focused on nothing else but the food before him. Tsukishima poorly disguises his laugh behind a cough; it’s a running joke among the third-years to imagine rice balls dancing around Kageyama’s head whenever he’s spaced out.
Yachi comes running not too long after, flushed with apologies for being late, and has to be soothed back into an even state before she can offer her excuse. “The art club is painting a banner for graduation,” she tells the boys. “My homeroom teacher stopped me and asked if I wouldn’t mind designing it for them.”
“Yachi-san, that’s so cool!” Hinata beams at her from across the table, turning the full brunt of his smile on the poor girl.
Yachi flushes, twirling her ponytail and mumbling something that was likely a dismissal of his compliments. No one is particularly surprised by her news, however; Yachi’s posters for the volleyball team and their success around the neighborhood had caused a buzz among the Karasuno students, and many clubs had approached her over the past three years asking her to design their posters as well. She could often be seen scurrying about with her camera strapped to her neck or fiddling with the design program on the library computers.
“Acchan is practicing hard these days, too,” Hinata tells them. “The music club is putting together a special performance for the graduation ceremony.”
“There’s a rumor going around that they’re going to release doves after the speeches,” Yamaguchi adds. “I don’t know how true that is, though.”
Yachi claps her hands. “It all sounds so exciting! I can’t believe we’re all graduating so soon!”
“I can believe that I’m graduating, but I’m surprised some people made it this far.” Tsukishima’s sneer is clearly directed across the table at the oddball duo, who turn red in perfect synchronization. Hinata yells "punishment!" and reaches over to steal an egg roll from his lunch box when he’s not quick enough in pulling away.
The rest of the lunch hour is a quieter affair. Yamaguchi and Yachi put their heads together and quietly discuss the latest novel they had read for their book club, of which they were the only members. Hinata determinedly avoids making eye contact with Kageyama, which leaves him with no one else to converse with except Tsukishima, who is not the least bit helpful in keeping a conversation going; it’s only when Kageyama sparks a debate about volleyball that he joins in, mostly to disagree over stats and teams with the setter, and this is how the three boys pass their time.
Near the end of the break, Yachi pulls out the bottom compartment of her lunch box and shyly presents it to the boys. “My mom wants to take some cookies to work for Valentine’s Day, so we were practicing making some last night. We got to test out our new cookie cutters—they’re heart-shaped!”
Hinata swipes a handful and fits them into his mouth all at once, then tries to tell Yachi they’re delicious but mostly just sprays crumbs everywhere.
Tsukishima looks repulsed. “Swallow first, idiot.”
Kageyama seems to sense what’s about to happen and lunges to protect his milk carton, but Hinata’s ultimate weapon has always been his speed; he swipes the carton and downs the milk before Kageyama can fist his collar and shake him, red in the face, yelling, “That’s mine!”
“You weren’t drinking it anyway!”
“I was saving it for last!”
Hinata puts the now-empty carton back into his hands, frowning and lecturing him, “Don’t be so stingy, Kageyama-kun. What’s a couple hundred yen between friends?”
Kageyama makes a violent notion towards him, but nothing can be done to magically procure the milk Hinata had already drank and he’s simply wasting time yelling here like this when the cafeteria would close after the first bell. With a sharp click of his tongue, he stomps off towards the lunch counter with spare coins jingling in his pocket, off to buy himself more milk.
Hinata’s not dense enough to think he’s been let off the hook; he knows he’s in for a whopping argument when Kageyama returns and he might even get milk poured over his head if he doesn’t tread right. But he’s giggling anyway.
“Did you see how sweaty his face got?” he laughs, whilst packing up his lunch box.
Yachi shakes her head, but there’s a fond smile tugging at her lips. “You know Kageyama-kun is quick to anger, Hinata. You shouldn’t test him like that if you don’t want him to yell at you.”
“I can’t help it if it’s funny!”
Tsukishima tuts. “It’s no use trying to instill common sense into Hinata’s brain.”
Hinata simply sticks out his tongue, then goes in search for the handkerchief his mother had used to tie his lunch box. He begins patting down his pockets and finds it in the left, but something unexpectedly crinkles in his right and he pulls out a folded piece of paper that he realizes belatedly is the spare flier for his shop. It’s not needed anymore, but he has another idea for its new home rather than just the inside of a bin.
The blazer to Kageyama’s uniform is hanging on the back of his chair. Hinata sneaks a glance over his shoulder, to be sure the boy was still in the cafeteria lineup and would not be coming back soon. Then he carefully pries apart the lip of his blazer pocket and stuffs the flier inside of it.
Something catches his eye. At first he thinks it’s just the corner of his own poster, the pink color of both seeming to mesh together into one. But it’s something entirely different and he can't resist pulling it out.
It’s an envelope.
There’s a heart-shaped sticker sealing the flap shut, and Kageyama’s name is written neatly on the back.
Hinata stares for a beat, then quietly puts it back.
Kageyama slinks back to their table loudly sucking milk from a straw, and Hinata endures a knuckle driven into his skull but doesn’t complain when he knows it could have been much worse. Kageyama adorns his blazer again once the first bell rings, not seeming to notice that anything was out of place, and the third-years disperse after hasty goodbyes.
Hinata stares up at him as they quietly return to their classrooms.
Kageyama unexpectedly catches his eyes. “What?”
He looks away. “Nothing.”
He’s not pushed for more information, and Hinata is thankful for this because he wouldn’t have known what to say. Kageyama had said, earlier, that he’d been late because someone had held him up. Hinata wonders if he’d been held up for a confession, whether it was the girl from class two, whether she had given him the envelope, what Kageyama had said to her, what it meant that he’d kept the letter. He wonders what kind of face Kageyama had made, at the receiving end of a confession, knowing that someone liked him in ways that were wholly romantic. He wonders what kind of face Kageyama would make if ever someone confessed to him who was not a girl.
Outside his classroom, Kageyama puts a hand on Hinata’s shoulder to keep him from going forward to his own. He asks, “You’re coming to practice, right?”
Hinata blinks up at him. “Yeah, of course.”
Kageyama nods. “Good.”
Then he disappears into the mill of students rushing into class three, Hinata left in the hallway staring after him and pondering the complicated emotions brewing all at once in his chest. He wonders, when Kageyama finally reaches into his pocket at the end of the day, which one he would throw away first: the flier or the envelope.
The crowd moves, and Hinata is moved along with it. He can see Yamaguchi in the distance, his height putting him above everyone else, but the boy probably can’t see him and Hinata’s given up on trying to fight the collective surge. The students on either side of him are pushy, listless, and green in the face. Hinata feels all of these things himself.
His eyes run over the jumble of numbers pasted before him, searching for the familiar pattern he could claim as his own. His stomach swoops to his feet when he catches sight of it. But suddenly the crowd veers left, and so does he, and it’s impossible to make out the verdict when there are so many heads blocking his view.
“Excuse me!” he huffs, but his voice is lost in the noise. He tries pushing forward next, but no one budges. There are bodies swarming everywhere and nowhere to go except let himself get pulled into the tide.
Impatient, Hinata does what he does best and springs into the air; if he can’t beat someone on land, he’s at least confident he can win any battle in the air. It’s not enough for him to see, but when he lands the power that vibrates down his legs is enough to force him even higher the second time, above the heads of everyone present. He draws awed looks and a gasp and a quiet wow somewhere on his left in response to his jumping prowess.
Hinata notices none of this, too busy cupping a hand over his eyes and squinting at the listings on the board for his number before his inevitable descent. He spies it at the very last second, when he can already feel gravity tugging on his core.
It feels as if his stomach plummets to the ground first, before even his feet or the rest of him follow.
Yamaguchi is already waiting when he manages to push his way out of the crowd, tucked away in a quiet corner and smiling vaguely to himself. He rushes forward when he spies the familiar orange hair, and asks, “How’d you do?”
Hinata shrugs. “All right.”
“No one was expecting any miracles,” he reminds him, his tone light.
Hinata makes a face up at him, then belts out a laugh. “I know! I did okay, really. I won’t even have to ask for Tsukishima’s forgiveness for wasting his time or anything. I can work with this.”
Yamaguchi seems relieved. “Oh, good.”
Hinata puts his lips together and hums, smiling cheerily as they leave the testing center behind and begin the trek towards the coffee shop. He congratulates Yamaguchi on a job well done, laughs where it’s appropriate, and tries to will away the bitter feeling clouding in his chest because it’s not right for this moment. He hadn’t done soul-crushingly awful and he knows he has his friends to thank for this. There are still options open for him, less than before but not completely wiped away, giving him hope for the future. And no one knows Osaka had been a fleeting dream of his aside from Kageyama.
Their manager is waiting at the counter when they arrive. “Suzune-chan called in sick for her shift today, so can either of you…” He tapers off once he notices their grim faces. “Uhh, why do you two look like you just came out from the other side of a war?”
“We got our entrance exam results today,” Yamaguchi explains.
“Ahh.” He nods sympathetically.
“I’ll do it,” Hinata pipes up, quietly focused on unwinding his scarf. “I’ll cover Suzune-san’s shift.”
“Thanks, Hinata. That’ll be a big help.”
The afternoon passes in much the same way as it always does, filling coffee orders and restocking napkins and cleaning up spills. Yamaguchi packs up his things and leaves at the end of his shift, and Hinata settles in for several more hours behind the counter. Keeping himself busy with work seems like the best way to numb his mind.
The roads are quiet when he’s eventually bound for home that night. The streets are empty, the school is empty, the mountain pass is dark and desolate. Hinata arrives home to collapse straight on his bed and doze off, still smelling like cappuccinos and caramel.
At school the next day, he is weary and unfocused. Acchan rouses him during the lunch hour, and he picks his head up from his arms just long enough to groan, “I worked a double shift yesterday.”
His friend squeezes his shoulder in support and leaves him to doze, and this is what sets the tone for the remainder of the afternoon. When the final bell rings, Hinata considers the idea of joining in on practice, of looking into Kageyama’s eyes and getting asked about his results, of flying across the court even despite the ache in his bones. But he simply packs up his things and returns home.
His phone pings late that afternoon, when he’s snuggled in his blankets with a sports magazine and trying not to doze. It’s Kenma, asking him, How’d it go?
Hinata remembers he had told him about his results coming in.
It went okay, he replies. I might come to Tokyo.
Tokyo would be an exciting destination. He’s never fooled himself into thinking he could attend the same university as Kenma, who was much smarter than him and also had Kuroo’s insistent tutoring on his side since childhood. But he’d looked into the city and its abundant student opportunities, contemplating living his life beside his friends from Nekoma. Compared to near and familiar Tokyo, Osaka had seemed so far away and never a truly serious option—until, of course, it had unexpectedly become Kageyama’s future home.
I’ll let you know, he tells Kenma, because right now, he doesn’t even know for himself.
Yachi, at least, is ecstatic for him in ways that only she could be. She claps her hands together, rosy red, and cheeps, “How amazing, Hinata! You did better than anyone could have expected!”
Hinata smiles bashfully. “It’s all thanks to you, Yachi-san.”
They’re loitering outside the door to her classroom, drawing a few curious eyes but not noticing, and Hinata gazes at her desk thinking of the many hours he and Kageyama had spent studying there, copying notes and circling answers and asking questions. He thinks of the many lunch hours Yachi had given up tutoring them with all the patience in the world, and feels a rush of affection for the sprightly girl.
“I owe you big time,” he tells her. “If there’s anything I can do for you, then just let me know!”
“O-oh, no, I…” Flushed, she waves airily over her shoulder. “Then, c-could I get your opinion on my designs for the art club banner? I did some sketches last night.”
“Sure!” With a laugh, he takes her by the wrist and drags her into the classroom.
Hinata is completely taken in once again by Yachi’s artistic talent. He holds up each design to the sunlight to lavish praises upon them, not realizing Yachi is turning redder and redder by the minute. He chooses a favorite immediately, a black design with the kanji for karasu made to look like a crow, but thinks he might be biased because it reminds him so much of their volleyball club banner. He’s mid-laugh and only just about to tell Yachi this, when a strong hand clamps his shoulder and he’s forcefully spun around, suddenly looking up into Kageyama’s scowling face.
His mouth snaps shut.
Kageyama seethes, “Why weren’t you at practice yesterday?”
There’s a squeak somewhere to their left which is undoubtedly Yachi, though neither of the boys pay her mind. Hinata calmly looks back into the storm brewing in those blue eyes and feels a strange sense of peace, like Kageyama could do nothing right now that would hurt him.
“I worked a double shift the night before,” he tells him. “I was tired.”
Kageyama forms his mouth around the word: tired. It seems to incense him further, blue turning into black. “You said your job wouldn’t get in the way of practice!”
“They didn’t have anybody else to cover!” he shoots back. “What else was I supposed to do!”
“I don’t know and I don’t give a shit!”
“G-Guys, please,” Yachi pleads, looking past them at the litter of students about the room watching them with interest. The last thing they need is the vice-principal getting called in, not this close to graduation. “Can’t we all just get along?”
She is ignored.
Hinata brushes off the hand on his shoulder, remarking, “I’ll come tomorrow. It’s not a big deal.”
Kageyama grinds down on his teeth, seeming to take issue with the casual remark. Hinata doesn’t understand what there is to get worked up about; he loves Karasuno but it’s not his team anymore, it’s the underclassmen’s, and he’s not under obligation to come to practice every day. He and Kageyama haven’t missed going to practice together even after the national tournaments because they’re proud of the legacy they had created, because they want their juniors to go far with the proper training, because playing together has always been the best part of any day. But skipping just one practice is not worth this sort of reaction.
There are times when Kageyama’s red and sweaty face is an endearing sight, but here he is like a charging bull seeing bloodlust in his eyes, advancing upon Hinata and barking at him, “It’s like you don’t care about the team!”
Angered by his almighty tone, Hinata yells back, “You don’t get to decide that, Stupid Kageyama! Maybe I’ll just never come again and it wouldn’t be any of your damn business!”
“H-he didn’t mean that,” Yachi ekes, looking out past the gaps in her fingers.
Kageyama shoves him, hard. “Don’t come again, then. See if I care.”
He turns tail and stalks out, and Hinata lets him. There are people whispering things about him and Kageyama behind cupped hands and shifty looks, and normally he might be embarrassed, but now he’s too busy glaring at the spot where the setter had just stood. It’s only Yachi’s warm touch, her hands gently sliding across his shoulders and giving him a reassuring squeeze, that keep him grounded in the moment.
“Come on,” she murmurs next to his ear. “Let’s go somewhere with less people.”
He allows himself to be led out. His legs feel like they move in automatic motions, and he’s thankful for Yachi’s guidance or otherwise he’d be dazedly running into things or not capable of movement at all. Yachi leads them to a quiet corridor in the school, devoid of activity aside from the rare passing student, which is where Hinata finally unleashes a kick at the wall.
“He’s the worst!”
“No, he’s not,” she replies, calmly.
“I hate him.”
“You don’t really mean that, do you, Hinata? It’s a terrible thing to say if you don’t mean it. Think about how hurt Kageyama-kun would feel if he heard you saying that.”
Hinata scratches his fingers against his scalp and lets out a noise of frustration, followed by a sigh that delates him whole. “Fine, I take it back. But that was a really jerk move, don’t tell me it wasn’t.”
Yachi smiles. “I won’t say Kageyama-kun was in the right. But he must have his reasons for what he did.”
“Reasons?” Hinata frowns. “He just likes picking fights. It’s how he refuels when his backup charger’s broken.”
“I don’t think that’s necessarily true…” Hinata scrunches up his face, ready to counter, except Yachi taps a finger to her chin and says, “Think about it. There’s no way Kageyama-kun could have known that you were in my classroom, which means he must have gone around specially looking for you. That must mean this was really important to him, don’t you think?”
Hinata opens his mouth, closes it, then harrumphs rather loudly to voice his general displeasure. “He didn’t have to be so snippy about it.”
“It’s just how he is. You and I both know it.”
Some of the fight reluctantly drains from Hinata’s body at the receiving end of such logical arguments. He slumps against the corridor wall, before falling completely into a crouch. Yachi quietly joins him, taking a proper seat on the floor with her skirt neatly tucked under her.
After a brief and companionable silence, Hinata asks, “You don’t think I was really terrible for skipping practice, do you, Yachi-san? I really was tired. And there were… other things.”
Yachi quickly shakes her head. “Of course not!”
“Then why’s Kageyama being like that?”
“Well…” Her tone light, delicate, she tells him, “I don’t think Kageyama-kun is taking the idea of graduation very well.”
Hinata frowns. He remembers Yamaguchi saying a similar thing a week ago, and even now, it’s a difficult notion to believe. Kageyama’s had solid plans for the future since before any of them had even begun contemplating their own; while other students had been poring over textbooks, fading into nothingness in cram schools, or fretting over exam results, he’d been eagerly awaiting his time to enter the professional volleyball world. He’s not like Hinata, who feels like he’s spiraling through a vortex trying to figure out where his next home will be.
Yachi sees his eyebrows connect and must sense where his thoughts have taken him, because she hurries to add, “I’m not talking about entrance exams or career surveys or anything like that! I’m saying that… I think Kageyama-kun is not ready to graduate from the team.”
Hinata shakes his head. “He’ll be playing for one of the best teams in the league.”
“But the best team in the league is no Karasuno.” She bites down on her lip, chewing thoughtfully. “Kageyama-kun might not ever say it, he might not even know that he thinks it, but this team probably means a lot to him. I-I mean, if you really think about it, Karasuno was his first and proper team, his first and proper home. For three years, he’s had the kind of teammates he’d probably only dreamed of growing up; you, and Tanaka-san, and Nishinoya-san, and everyone else. O-Of course, this is just what I think, but... it seems like it would feel pretty lonely to have to leave all that behind.”
Hinata’s gut churns then, from the same kind of loneliness Yachi is talking about because he’s been feeling it recently himself. He wonders if Kageyama worries about the same things that he does at night: whether Yachi would ever visit, or if Tsukishima would keep in touch, or how often he would see Yamaguchi when the ties of school no longer bounded them together. He wonders if Osaka ever feels like someplace scary and far away to Kageyama rather than just an exciting adventure. He wonders if Kageyama is ever nervous about his new teammates, what they’ll be like, whether they’ll get along, whether they’ll ever come to accept him the way Karasuno had—the way Hinata had.
“I think you skipping practice probably scared him in a way,” Yachi adds, delicately. “It probably feels like he’s already started losing his team.”
Hinata throws his head back, letting it repeatedly bang against the wall, and groans like a wounded animal. “Ughh. Great. Now I feel bad.”
She giggles, reaching out to keep his head from hitting the wall once more. “Don’t feel bad, Hinata. You didn’t do anything wrong. Kageyama-kun is just very bad at articulating his feelings.”
He just meshes his lips together, pondering their heavy conversation and the things that had come to light. Eventually, he turns a small smile on the girl. “Thanks for talking to me, Yachi-san. And for getting me out of there before people started gossiping too much. That was kind of embarrassing, looking back on it.”
Yachi gets to her feet and dusts off her skirt, offering him her hand with a smile. “I hope the two of you can make the most of the time you have left together.”
And Hinata keeps on smiling, all the way back to their classrooms, even though those words are like a hook through his heart dangling it perilously. Time now with Kageyama is limited once more, and he fosters the idea of tracking down the boy and explaining himself, telling him everything about working double shifts and entrance exam results and Tokyo and pink envelopes. But the first bell rings, and he shrinks away.
For the rest of the afternoon, he thinks about Kageyama, and Karasuno, and about desperately trying to hold on to precious things before being forced to let them go.
His mother is entirely enamored with her gift.
Hinata’s last Valentine’s Day of his high school career begins with spending five minutes pressed to his mother’s chest and enduring kisses peppered all across his face, not wholly displeased by his predicament but having to pretend he was so to protect his manly pride. Natsu tip-taps about the house, making sure her new hairpins are on display for everyone to see.
Hinata admits he had gone slightly overboard, braving the lavish jewelry shop entirely on his own with all his three weeks’ worth of paychecks in his clutch. His mother’s necklace had been his first buy, but he’d spotted a set of hairpins he had known Natsu would love dearly, and then he simply could not resist buying a second set to match, as his gratitude towards Yachi for everything she had done for him in these three years. His wallet was now barren but he’s satisfied seeing his family this happy, and the second set of pins is tucked away in his bookbag to be given to Yachi when the next week began.
Pulling away from his mother’s embrace, he complains, “Okaa-san, I’ll be late for work!”
“Make sure you come straight home so we can celebrate,” she coos, fresh tears in her eyes. “You don’t have plans, do you?”
“I don’t!” he assures her, now halfway out the door. With a promise to be back soon, and to bring back a cake from his shop, he finally is able to climb his bike and pedal his way over the mountain.
The coffee shop is filled from table to table when he arrives for his shift. It’s an incredible sight to see; a small shop like theirs normally saw only a handful of customers at any one time, and Hinata has never had to handle this sort of buzz before. He catches Suzune’s eyes, who had started work just an hour before him, and she forces a weary smile onto her face.
“Promotions have such an amazing power!” he marvels to his manager, who laughs at his genuine awe.
Despite the sweet couples crowding the café and the scent of chocolate suspended in the air, however, it’s a bittersweet afternoon. It’s Hinata’s last day working in the shop, and Yamaguchi is not here; when asked if he could work on Valentine’s, he’d raged a fierce plum color and confessed that he had been saving up for this very occasion, though Hinata’s incessant questioning hadn’t revealed any more details.
Hinata silently sends him good vibes, then situates himself behind the counter with his apron secured around his waist, smiling brightly at every customer that walks in. There are couples at every turn with their heads bent together sharing cakes, a sight that once might have sent him into an embarrassed frenzy but now feels warm like his mother’s kisses. His shift is spent like this, busy and with no time to dawdle, and it seems as if he blinks and suddenly the sky is already darkening outside.
“I hope Yamaguchi is having a nice time, wherever he is,” he says, cheerily.
Suzune grimaces. “At least one of us is dating. I can live vicariously through him.”
Hinata laughs, then puts his back to the door so he can concentrate on his latte art. The wind chimes by the door jingle and Suzune kindly greets a customer, asking for their coffee order. And Hinata’s heart just about arrests when he hears a familiar grumble behind him.
“I don’t usually drink coffee. Something with lots of milk.”
“Hmm. Is a cappuccino okay?”
There’s a pause, then a gruff, “…That’s fine.”
Hinata swivels where he stands and makes eye contact; Kageyama realizes he’s been caught looking and quickly flits his gaze away.
His mouth falls open, a flood of questions on the tip of his tongue. But Suzune nudges him before he can speak. “Hinata, I think the couple back there is trying to flag you down. Are you done with their lattes?”
“Uh… Y-Yes!”
He stares shamelessly at Kageyama but their eyes do not meet again, so he is forced to speed around the counter with his heart palpitating wildly. What’s Kageyama doing here? He’s not here to pick a fight, is he? Had he come alone?
By the time Hinata returns—which involves some brisk walking and plenty of tripping over his own feet, embarrassingly enough—Kageyama has fisted at least six sugar packets from the counter and already plunked himself down at an empty table in a corner of the shop. He does not look up from glaring into his coffee, even though Hinata makes it a point to stare at his face when he passes.
He and Kageyama haven’t spoken since their public squabble in Yachi’s classroom. Hinata had dutifully attended practices following that day, but neither of them had spoken or even apologized. There just hadn’t seemed to be a need; arguments with Kageyama had a natural tendency to amend themselves, maybe because they had too many for them to not fizzle within a day or two. But not this one. Hinata hasn’t admitted it, not even to himself, but the lack of development has left him on edge.
He is lost in these toiling emotions when his manager sticks out his head from the kitchen. “Hinata, can you bring this cake over to the two girls by the window*? Oh, and we need to put out more napkins. There should be some in the back.”
Hinata jumps, remembering suddenly that he’s at work and he can’t afford to be spacing like this. He wipes his sweaty palms on his work apron and goes about doing his job, trying to ignore the boy sitting alone by the window even though his eyes keep getting pulled in that direction. He wants so badly to ask what Kageyama is doing here, but is too nervous to be the first one to initiate conversation.
Not too long after, Suzune brings him close and whispers in his ear, “What do you think his deal is?”
“Who?”
“That loner boy by the window.” She juts her chin, referring obviously to Kageyama. “I mean, it’s not weird that he’s alone, but he’s just been sitting there staring into his coffee this whole time. Not even on his phone or anything.”
“Oh, um…” Hinata tries not to look even though she clearly wants him to. It’s not any of his business whether Kageyama is on his phone or not, though he might be a little bit offended if he was, since the boy was so awful about texting him back.
“I’d say he’s here for a date but he only ordered one coffee. Maybe he’s waiting for his girlfriend?” She squints at his face, subtlety forgotten in the face of curiosity. “He actually looks kind of nervous. Maybe it’s a first date and he’s here early? A first date in a coffee shop on Valentine’s Day—how romantic!”
Hinata doesn’t understand how she had discerned nervous when Kageyama’s face betrays nothing more than the murderous scowl it was often not without. Perhaps it was the aged wisdom of being a college student. He wonders what emotion his face is betraying right now, and whether she could read it.
“He could be here alone,” he tries to say, hoping he doesn’t sound too petulant.
She tuts. “Dear, naive Hinata. Look around you. Do you see anyone else here who’s not part of a couple?”
His throat closes, feeling grainy and snug as he’s forced to agree. “…No.”
The image of a pink envelope flickers through his mind.
It feels insanely cruel. He’s been inviting Kageyama to his shop again and again only to constantly face the sting of rejection, and now the boy has finally arrived, but in the clutches of a faceless girl on a romantic holiday. If this is a form of punishment, then Hinata might have to rethink everything he’s ever thought about Kageyama’s personality.
He looks up at the boy, disheartened, but is surprised to find that he’s looking back. When he realizes he’s been caught looking, again, Kageyama quickly looks back down into his coffee.
“Oops, he caught us.” Suzune laughs, though she appears sheepish. “Maybe he realized we were talking about him.”
Hinata mumbles something before quietly returning to sweeping behind the counter. He doesn’t want to speak about Kageyama and he doesn’t want Kageyama thinking that he’s speaking about him. Right now, he doesn’t want Kageyama thinking that anything he says or does matters to Hinata in any way.
The night continues. Hinata doesn’t look at the table by the window and simply focuses on the things that he’s ordered to do: making coffee, clearing tables, washing cups, sweeping floors, refilling the straw dispenser. This is his last night here and he doesn’t want one bad experience tainting what has otherwise been a quaint and pleasurable space for him; he salutes his manager, teases Suzune on her ever-present loneliness, and makes some pretty girls laugh with his exaggerated waiter routine. It feels nice, good. He’s humming even, when he brings empty cups back to the kitchen to be washed.
Suzune is there with their manager, speaking in hushed tones, and Hinata tries not to eavesdrop but she doesn’t seem to mind that he’s there.
“We should at least give him a free cake or something,” she’s saying. “I feel so bad for him.”
Hinata shamelessly listens in now. “Who’s getting a free cake?”
She sighs. “That boy sitting alone by the window, remember him? It’s been an hour now and he’s still there all alone. I think the poor guy’s been stood up.”
Heart lodged up in his throat, Hinata scurries to the kitchen door and plasters himself to the little window, peering at the bowl-shaped haircut that hasn’t changed since middle school. Kageyama is still there, alone, glaring into his coffee that looks practically untouched even though all six of his sugar packets have been ripped open. There is no girl across the table from him.
“Give him a fruit tart,” Hinata blurts out.
His coworkers give him long, questioning looks, and he stammers, “He’s a health… W-Well, he looks like a health nut, doesn’t he? I’ll do it.” Putting his hands together, he pleads to his manager, “Please let me do it! Let me give it to him! I’ll talk to him a little, see if he’s okay!”
“If anyone could cheer the guy up, it’s Hinata,” Suzune agrees.
Despite initial reluctance, it does not take much persuasion for him to agree; apparently Kageyama’s intense and murderous aura has been upsetting the nearby couples, and Hinata has to physically repress his giggles as he approaches with the mentioned fruit tart, waltzing right into the deadly atmosphere without a misstep.
Kageyama looks up in alarm when the plate is placed before him.
Hinata slides into the seat across, leaning in on his folded arms, and explains, “It’s a fruit tart. We make it with way less sugar than regular tarts, so it’s one of our healthier options. It’s really popular with the old people we get in here.”
Kageyama blinks, as if unsure whether he should be offended or even say something. In the end he doesn’t speak at all, and it’s somehow more unnerving than having him barking in his face. Kageyama is usually only lethal and silent like this on the court, in moments when he’s especially impressive and a little like an untouchable god.
Hinata still tries to brave onwards. “You haven’t touched your coffee,” he notes.
“This thing is half caffeine and half sugar,” he grumbles, glaring down at it.
“We have hot chocolate, too.”
“That’s all sugar.”
Hinata purses his lips together but a few giggles still peep through, as he tells him, “You could have just asked me for a glass of straight milk if you wanted. I would have gotten it for you.”
“…I wasn’t sure,” Kageyama huffs. He begins ripping one of his empty sugar packets to pieces, though it just seems to be an excuse for something else to look at. “If I could talk to you.”
Hinata stares. “Why couldn’t you talk to me?”
“Stupid. You know why.”
He does now why. But he wants to hear it from Kageyama’s mouth, just a little bit, that their argument has been weighing heavy on his mind and he wants to make amends, that he’s just as tired of this awkward tip-toe they’ve been caught up in since. Walking around eggshells with Kageyama had been a normal thing back when first-year had just begun, but it feels wholly disjointing now after three years together.
“Yeah,” he concedes, slowly. “I do know why.”
Kageyama bites the inside of his cheek and rolls it between his teeth, just thinking, then grunts, “So we’re okay now?”
Hinata grins. “We’re okay.”
This straightforward and taciturn part of his relationship with Kageyama has always been one of his favorites. Around the bickering, they’re able to say so much with very little. It used to be a sense restricted to the court—being able to communicate with just their eyes which quick they wanted to perform—but somewhere along the line it had become a staple in their everyday life.
Kageyama stares down at the tart before him, something complicated flickering through his eyes. “What’s this for, then? I didn’t ask for it and I didn’t pay for it.”
Hinata rolls his eyes. “Don’t complain, Kageyama, it’s on the house! Some of my coworkers have gotten it in their heads that you…”
He tapers off, tongue faltering over the words stood up and all that they implied. He feels flushed at the prospect of telling Kageyama that they had been gossiping about him, expecting a pretty girl to come in and take the seat Hinata was currently in.
“That I, what?” Kageyama presses.
“N-Nothing. Just… It’s on the house so don’t question it, or else I’ll take it away!”
He pulls the plate out of reach just as Hinata lunges for it, drawling, “Stupid. I didn’t say I didn’t want it.”
He picks up the plastic spoon and slices a portion to fit in his mouth, chewing deliberately so Hinata would know it was now his. He seems to enjoy it, even if he doesn’t say so, more than he would have the cake. Hinata plays aimlessly with his hands and watches him swallow, knowing he should get back up to work now that Kageyama’s lethal aura was no longer disturbing those around him. But he wants to stay here a little bit longer.
Kageyama looks around curiously. “Where’s Yamaguchi?”
“Oh. He had a date.”
“Hmm?” He nods absently and reaches for another portion of his tart, and Hinata can’t tell if he’s unsurprised by the news or simply uninterested in things like this.
He wonders why Kageyama had come here, to the place where Hinata worked, on a couples’ holiday. He wonders whether the girl from class two had really confessed to him, whether he’d really had a date, whether he’d really been stood up. He wonders why he’s always wondering things about Kageyama these days, but never actually asking them.
“What brings you here, Kageyama?” he asks, his mouth moving on automatic pilot. He doesn’t hurry to take back the words, though. He wants to know.
Kageyama seems surprised. “What do you mean? You told me to come, didn’t you?”
Hinata ignores how airy and feather light that makes him feel on the inside, like it was the most natural thing in the world that Kageyama would come when he called. “I’ve told you to come like a hundred times. Why now? Why did you come today, of all days?”
He frowns, his brows connecting in the middle. Then he quietly sets down his spoon, digs through the pocket of his coat slung over his chair, and unfolds a wrinkled piece of paper that he places on the table between them. It’s a pink flier advertisement for the coffee shop.
“You put this in my pocket, didn’t you?”
Hinata stares at it, feeling a burn climb his neck. “I-I did, but… I thought you threw it away.”
Kageyama had said nothing about finding it at all. But then, he suddenly realizes, he’d been given no chance to when their following encounter had constituted a falling out over the team and, loaded behind the conversation, over having to soon let everything go that they had built together.
“I almost did.” Kageyama shrugs. “I thought you were using my pocket like your personal wastebasket, I almost trashed it. But, see, look.” He runs his fingers along the bottom of the page, highlighting a specific line. “It says the date right here.”
Hinata groans into his hands. “Stupid. I gave it to you because of the address on it, not the date!”
“Oh.” He blinks down at the advertisement, then shrugs again. “Well, what’s it matter anyway?”
“It matters because it’s… it’s Valentine’s Day,” Hinata hisses, arching over on the table as if cluing him into a secret.
“So?”
“Sooo. People will think you’re on a...” His eyes land on a particularly tactile couple two tables over, who’re feeding each other cake from the same spoon and touching noses when they lean in close, and he batters down a flush. “...date.”
Kageyama frowns. “So what?”
So what?
A wholly apathetic notion, yet somehow it feels like a betrayal, that lucid and uninterested Kageyama suddenly doesn’t care if people think he’s dating or if he’s waiting on a girlfriend. Rumors have been following him incessantly since third-year began, usually with girls attached at the end of them even though Hinata was the person he gave the most of his time. And Hinata knows he is owed nothing, yet he had been expecting things anyway. These days, with all this talk of legacies and moving onwards together and good, good, good, Hinata had felt like it had all been building to something.
“So... it’s weird,” he says.
“Me being on a date is weird?”
Kageyama wound up in the arms of a girl is weird. Kageyama sitting across this table from someone else, feeding them off his spoon, bumping noses with them, texting with someone else, squabbling with someone else, holding someone’s else’s hand—that’s all weird. Just the thought of it makes Hinata feel sick, like bitter cough medicine seeping down his throat, makes him feel the icy dread of being pulled away into the ocean’s tide. It should be him.
“Yeah,” he hears himself say, like his body was not his own. “I can’t imagine you ever dating anyone. It’s kinda gross, just thinking about it.”
He’s sorry as soon as he says it, because Kageyama glares out the window, not seeing much past the tinted glass except for his own reflection glowering back at them, but he looks suddenly like he very much wants to hit something. He looks like he wants to punch a hole straight through the glass where two boys, bright blue eyes and sunny orange locks, sit together like it’s the most natural thing in the world. But when he makes contact with brown warmth in the reflection, the surge in him seems to diminish before it can reach its full potential. With a sigh, he pushes away the half-eaten tart on the table and peers into Hinata’s eyes.
“You’re always telling me to visit,” he scoffs, “and now you’re telling me I shouldn’t have come. Make up your mind, idiot.”
“I-I wanted you to visit!” Hinata insists. Just not like this.
When he’d imagined Kageyama visiting, it had almost always been to the backdrop of the setting sun, the afternoon dissolving into a quiet evening and the shop equally as silent. He’d imagined wowing Kageyama with coffee brewed by his hand, arguing as usual over volleyball plays, throwing straws at him from the counter, sitting at a round table just like this and talking about everything and nothing. It had never felt stilted or awkward, in his fantasies, never subdued by a previous argument or the insecurity of Kageyama dating someone else.
Everything he’s been imagining these days, from coffee shop visits to building intimacy in an entirely new city—it’s taken only seconds for it all to crumble before his eyes.
Hinata sighs, then clambers to his feet. “Well, I should get back to work.”
Kageyama seems as if he wants to say something but doesn’t; he dismisses him with a jerk of his head before turning back to his tart, picking up his spoon and quietly returning to brooding into his coffee cup though with much less murderous intent.
Hinata slinks up to his waiting coworkers, who sigh with relief when he tells them, “I think he’ll be okay.”
He smiles briefly at the reaction; they’re good people and he’ll miss them.
The rest of the shift drags on, as it normally does when they’ve reached the final stretch. They still have patrons in their shop until the very end, and Kageyama is one of them. It’s not until the clock strikes the hour that he discards his empty plate and his half-filled coffee cup, and follows the remaining couples out of the shop. Hinata watches him go, staring at his back and pondering how often he’s been doing that lately.
Hinata bids his final goodbyes to the other workers that night, a pastry box slung in a bag on his wrist, and exits into the cool, night air. Some part of him knows that he shouldn’t be surprised, really, but he still is—to see that Kageyama is there.
“Hey,” he says, feeling hazy.
“Hey,” Kageyama says back, pushing away from the wall.
They wordlessly fall into step together, though the rub of their coats whenever they bump arms sound almost like whispers in the quiet night. Hinata hopes he still smells like cappuccinos and caramel, that Kageyama still thinks it’s good.
The bus is predictably full of couples, most of them still running on the high of their romantic excursions. It feels particularly unbearable having to stand arm-to-arm with Kageyama in the middle of the amorous crowd and pretend he’s not aware of the body pressing against his. He and Kageyama seem to be playing a game of accidental brushes, never acknowledging that they’re touching but always hyperaware that they always are in some way.
At one point the bus lurches, and he thinks he feels Kageyama’s hand ghosting across his back to keep him steady, though he retracts it so quickly that it’s impossible to be sure it had even happened. It’s the boldest touch of the night.
It’s only when they reach the outskirts of the city, winding down to the last few stops of the route, that most of the passengers depart. By the time the tall and electric buildings turn into quiet scenery, they’re sharing a bench at the back of the bus across the aisle from a dozing elderly couple.
Hinata looks at him straight, and tells him, “I can’t go to Osaka with you.”
Kageyama looks away from the window to stare at him instead, surprised.
“I got my exam results back,” he explains. “I didn’t do good enough to get in.”
Kageyama is quiet at this, mulling over the news or perhaps not knowing what to say. It’s not as if Hinata expects to be comforted; asking such a thing from Kageyama would be nothing short of a pipe dream. But looking out at the grassy farmlands of their approaching hometown, not knowing when the next time would be that he could see this view with Kageyama, had started up an unbearable urge that begged him to confess everything. He doesn’t like this shameful tug that’s made a constant home in his stomach the longer he keeps this secret. And he figures Kageyama deserves an explanation, too, for this irregular behavior that’s been catching him off guard lately.
Eventually, Kageyama grumbles, “Studying’s never been your strong point.”
Hinata gives him a long and shrewd look. “Aren’t you disappointed?” he asks, and without waiting for an answer, he admits, “I’m disappointed. I was looking forward to going there with you. I had all these thoughts in my head about what it would be like.”
Kageyama seems taken aback by his candidness, even though it’s always been a part of Hinata’s nature. He opens his mouth, then closes it, then hesitantly asks, “What are you going to do now?”
“I’m trying to figure it out.” He shrugs. “I might go to Tokyo.”
“Kozume-san is there…”
“And Inuoka is staying there, too. They both want me to come.”
“Are you going?” he wants to know.
Hinata is entirely truthful. “I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking about it until I got my results. It’s really kind of stupid, I know, the chances were so slim and I had barely looked into it, but… I really had my heart set on Osaka.”
He’d considered it briefly, the idea of waiting another year and then trying again, putting all his eggs in one basket in a way. But he’s not confident in his ability to test any better the second time around. And he’s unnerved by the idea of being left behind by those around him; Kageyama has already solidified himself a spot on a professional team, Yachi has her new place in a fancy design program abroad, Tsukishima has options open to him from all corners of the world, and Yamaguchi has always seemed certain of his life’s path. The only thing Hinata has ever been sure about is volleyball.
Kageyama doesn’t say anything for the rest of the bus ride. He just stares out the window as if mesmerized by the hazy glow of the passing streetlights, and it’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking, whether he’s disappointed, whether he could care less.
Hinata fully expects to separate at their tiny, secluded bus stop that is nothing more than a stop sign on the side of a cracking road. But Kageyama follows him dutifully to the bike racks, then on the trek to their usual spot. Never saying anything, just staying near.
“I told my mom I’d come straight home,” Hinata tells him, awkwardly, gesturing to the pastry box he has strapped to the back of his bike.
Kageyama nods. “Okay.”
He still keeps following.
The moon is big and bright tonight, grander than it’s been in a long time without the cover of snow clouds. The beam of its light is so blinding that it reminds Hinata of middle school, crying on the steps of the town’s gymnasium, the sunlight just as stark as it glinted behind Kageyama’s form. Promising that one day he would match up to this boy. Hinata looks up at the moon and wills himself to not feel this looming sense of hope.
It takes all of his courage to offer, “You should come, too. If you want.”
Kageyama frowns as if he doesn’t understand the proposition. “To your house?”
“Y-Yeah. My dad’s not here so we’re gonna have some cake, me, and Natsu, and my mom. Probably watch some cheesy movie because my mom loves those. And sometimes we play spin the bottle but with cheek kisses instead!” He tries not to think about the end of a bottleneck and Kageyama’s mouth. “You’ve been to my house before, so… it wouldn’t be weird.”
Kageyama glares at the ground. “I can’t go to your house,” he says. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”
“S-So? You said you didn’t care about all that!”
“I care now that you’ve said you care.”
Hinata squeezes his eyes shut and his knuckles turn white from the grip he has on his handlebars, and he pleads with his voice not to falter, please don’t shake, when he asks, “Why? Because it’s gross if another boy invites you to his house to celebrate something like that?”
“What?” Kageyama sounds annoyed. “No. Dumbass. Who said that?”
Hinata is silent.
“If you think it’s so gross then why are you inviting me?”
“I-I didn’t say it was gross! I said you think it’s gross!”
“And when did I say that?” he demands. Definitely annoyed.
Hinata puts his lips together and grumbles something incoherent.
“Say it louder, dumbass.”
“I said, ‘So you’re coming, then, right?’” he repeats, significantly higher in volume than before, and glares up at him with fire licking his face.
Kageyama locks his jaw as if issued a challenge and stomps on ahead, and at the foot of the mountain pass where he would normally veer off towards the street below, he begins resolutely to climb the hill. It takes a moment for the reality to sink in, then Hinata yelps and hurries to catch up, his bike chain rattling in beat to the movement. It is not a path he’s taken often with Kageyama before, if rarely at all, but this moment still feels old and rehearsed like they’ve done it many times before—like spontaneous races to the gym, tangled brawls across from volleyball nets, reckless tosses that fit just right, or sharing pork buns outside of a corner store under the fading sunset.
For Hinata, the last Valentine’s Day of high school begins in his mother’s arms, and ends with Kageyama at his side.
Hinata blinks down at his salmon, clearing away the blur around its outline. His mind feels muddled from lack of sleep and he doesn’t know how his mother has enough cheer in her to be humming as she moves about the kitchen this early. Since his father left, it’s become Hinata’s job to rise early and switch on the boiler in the back so they would have hot water for their morning showers, and he’s still adjusting to this new chore. It’s not normally this difficult, but then, they had stayed awake last night into the very late hours.
Natsu comes stumbling into the kitchen rubbing sleep from her eyes, and her hairpins glint as she pulls back her chair and climbs into it. She hasn’t taken them off since yesterday, had slept in them even. Hinata smiles and reaches over to flick her nose.
“Shouyou, I’ll need you to get some groceries for me today,” his mother tells him. “Goodness, you boys can eat. Between you and Kageyama-kun, our fridge is almost empty now.”
Hinata looks down at his food, sheepish. The two had sneaked out of Hinata’s room last night to secretly boil themselves some ramen, but had ultimately decided they were hungry enough for an entire second dinner. The leftover miso, steamed veggies, and grilled fish in the fridge, even the leftover rice in the rice cooker, and the dried seaweed and rice cakes in the cabinets—all of it was gone. They’d also held a fierce battle with their chopsticks over portion size, though their bickering had to be downgraded into conscious hissing and furtive glances towards the bedroom doors.
“It was mostly Kageyama,” Hinata insists.
His mother doesn’t seem truly upset. “He does have a healthy appetite, doesn’t he?” she laughs. “He can eat all he wants at our house, I don’t mind. He’s such a polite boy.”
“Kageyama?” Hinata squawks. “Polite?”
Kageyama did get this constipated look on his face when Hinata’s mother had welcomed him into their home, or when she had scooped extra rice into his bowl, or when she’d insisted he take the first slice of cake as they all sat in a ring around the living room table. Hinata had whispered to him, discreetly, that he didn’t have to keep saying thank you if it so visibly caused him pain; he’d gotten an elbow to his side for that.
Natsu dissolves into giggles. “Tobio-chan is funny! His face got all red and sweaty and funny when he had to kiss Nii-chan’s cheek!”
Hinata fingers the lump still aching dully under his scalp. “I think he cracked my head in two…”
You missed! How could you miss! Hinata had howled, and Kageyama had stuffed a cushion into his face and decided he wasn’t playing anymore. But he hadn’t stopped Natsu from kissing his cheek when her bottle had pointed him out, which apparently made him okay in her books.
“Speaking of Kageyama-kun,” his mother says, “don’t you think you should go wake him up, Shouyou?”
“He’s really grumpy first thing after being woken up,” he warns them, but still slides out of his seat and goes treading down the hall towards his room.
The late hour had forced Kageyama to spend the night. He’d seemed bothered by the idea of staying and intruding, but they’d advanced upon him like a murder of crows and even he, the most volatile teenager on the planet, was not immune to facing three Hinatas at once. Hinata’s father was the closest to his height so they had lent him his pajamas, but still they had hovered above his ankles and Hinata’s mother had decided he would freeze if he did not take the bed. Hinata had been booted to the guest futon spread out on his bedroom floor while Kageyama had slept on his mattress and under his blankets, though a majority of their night had been spent ransacking the kitchen rather than actually sleeping.
When he’d woken up, Kageyama had still been asleep with half his limbs falling over the edge of the bed. The sunlight peeping through the window had thrown crescent shadows over his face and under his lashes, and Hinata had hoped he was having a good dream.
It feels natural, having Kageyama in his home.
His bedroom door is still open a hair’s width the way he had left it, and Hinata peeks in through the crack fully prepared to chirp an infuriating, “Kageyama-kuuun~”
But Kageyama is already standing at the foot of the bed, wearing his clothes from yesterday and neatly folding the pajama bottoms he had borrowed for the night.
Hinata opens the door fully. “Oh. You’re awake.”
Kageyama narrows his eyes. “You were planning to be annoying, weren’t you?”
“Maybe…” There’s a sinister edge to his smirk that tells all. “It’s good you’re awake. Come have breakfast. Then I have to go grocery shopping after and you’re coming with me, since you practically ate us out of house and home last night.”
“Oi, I didn’t—”
“I know, I know.” Hinata is laughing as he retreats once again down the hall from where he had come, and his voice drifts from around the corner, “Come on. Everyone’s already at the table.”
Kageyama arrives at breakfast to a warm reception. His bangs are still damp and sticking to his forehead from having just washed his face, there are a few hairs poking out of his chin since he clearly had not been able to shave, and his eyebrows are doing their usual squiggly dance. But he appears much less grumpy than mornings at training camps. Hinata wonders if it has to do with his mother asking him sweetly if he’d like furikake flakes on his rice or Natsu pulling back a chair and insisting he sit next to her, and hides his smile in his bowl of soup.
After breakfast, Hinata’s mother sits Natsu in the living room with a brush to fix her hair and the pins dangling precariously from it. Kageyama and Hinata are loitering at the front door, tying their shoes or zipping up their windbreakers, when they hear Natsu ask, “Can I go to the market with Nii-chan and Tobio-chan, too?”
“Let’s let them go alone,” their mother responds, kindly. “We’ve been taking up so much of Kageyama-kun’s time. Don’t you think Shouyou wants to spend some quality time with his friend, too?”
Hinata feels a rush of embarrassment and glances at Kageyama to discern whether he had heard, but his face is completely blank and gives away nothing.
The mountain air always makes Hinata feel fresh and alive. The briskness of the morning has him wide awake, and he noisily stretches his arms over his head when they step outside, grinning at the rare spot of sunlight that hits his face. The snow clouds have returned in their dreary fashion, but Hinata feels anything but. It’s a new day, a new morning, and one of the secrets he’s been holding desperately from his partner was now out in the open; he feels properly cleansed.
“It’s a bit of a walk,” he warns the setter. “I usually take my bike, but now there’s two of us. Unless you’re okay with riding with me on the back…?”
Kageyama rolls his eyes, then clamps Hinata’s wrist and drags him down the house path. “We’re walking.”
The trail they follow is heavily sloped, and for the most part, they just concentrate on overcoming it. Hinata can cross this distance in ten minutes on his bike but it takes triple the time on foot, yet he doesn’t complain. Kageyama is being weirdly calm, and doesn’t even respond testily when Hinata begins humming some tune terribly off-key for the longest time. He’s been uncharacteristically peaceful for a while now, not just today, and Hinata ponders the cause.
The shopping street comes into view around the bend. Some stores are still closed because of the early hour—they come upon Yukigaoka Electric where Hinata first saw the Small Giant on TV, though the shutters are closed, and Hinata points it out to Kageyama to tell him of the history behind the shop—but the market opens bright and early.
The sweet lady from the produce stall waves them down. “Shouyou-chan, you’re not rushing off to school, are you?”
“There’s no school on Sunday!” he reminds her, good-naturedly, and picks up a grapefruit to breathe in its citrusy scent. A noise of content vibrates past his throat.
“Ahh, that’s right. I always see you when you’re rushing off to school, so I got into the habit.” She chuckles, and the wrinkles around her mouth are made more prominent. She eyes the grapefruit in Hinata’s hands. “Why don’t you take a few back to your family, hm? I’m only doing this for you, Shouyou-chan, so don’t tell anyone else or they’ll all be wanting handouts.”
“Wow, really?” Hinata beams, accepting the paper bag she hands him with a few grapefruit inside. He tells Kageyama, “This is the nice auntie who’s always giving me lemons to bring to practice for all of us!”
Kageyama hums with a small amount of enthusiasm.
The supermarket is quiet at this time in the morning, so they’re free to wander about with a basket tucked over Hinata’s arm. There’s a sale on eggs, and Kageyama spends an incredibly long time picking each one from the carton for inspection but mostly just glaring at them full force. They argue over the best seasoning to purchase, try to calculate whether it’s cheaper to buy two small bags of rice or one medium-sized one, and get into a swordfight with leeks in hand until a disgruntled customer coughs in their direction.
Hinata has Kageyama by the wrist when they exit, purchases in hand, bringing him eagerly towards the meat stall where the owner greets them warmly.
“Uncle makes the best korokke I’ve ever had, you have to try them,” Hinata jabbers. “I buy one on the way home from practice whenever I can, seriously! Could we each get one, please, uncle? Me and Kageyama walked a lot and also did a lot of shopping, so we’re in need of a good snack!”
The man laughs. “Coming right up, Shouyou.”
They watch him fry dough with interest and wrap them up nicely in paper to carry away, and Hinata forks over some coins even though Kageyama is twisting his collar and insisting that he can pay. The meat stall uncle laughs and calls them hearty for the enthusiastic way they bicker, then sends them on their way.
As they walk away, laden with groceries and their food, Hinata looks up at Kageyama with his lashes innocently fluttering and says, “Consider it payback for the milk. What’s a couple hundred yen between friends, right?”
Kageyama clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth before devouring his potato cake, but Hinata knows he’s not angry anymore.
The walk home is punctuated with a handful of unexpected stops, at least whilst they still stroll along the shopping street; Hinata detours towards the salon and spends a good ten minutes petting the owner’s Shiba Inu, even though Kageyama stands far back and grumbles that animals don’t like him; a prim-looking man Hinata remembers as a middle school teacher stops them on the road to congratulate them on their run at Nationals; and a woman with a stroller calls Hinata over to fawn over her newborn, who promptly begins crying when Kageyama peeks under the cover.
But soon the street disappears behind a sloped angle, the road becoming a twining path of foliage and waking birds, and the two are secluded again.
Hinata is still snickering. “They say animals and babies can sense someone’s true character.”
“One more word, idiot, and I’ll crack an egg over your head.”
He shuts his mouth.
But Kageyama is still prickly from the embarrassment of having to explain to some stranger that he hadn’t been trying to make her baby cry, this was just his face, and getting taken away by a tutting Hinata before the situation escalated further.
“Is there anyone in this town you don’t know?” he grumbles. The hair on his arm has stood up.
“I know pretty much everyone,” Hinata replies, as a fact rather than a boast. “All the aunties in the neighborhood know me because we used to practice volleyball together, you know, before I had a proper team. And when Natsu was born, I was always running errands for my mom in all the shops.”
Hinata’s house holds an immeasurable number of memories. It’s the first house his parents had bought together after getting married, and since then it has watched the family grow, from one couple in love, to a healthy son, to a sprightly daughter. Hinata has a memory he can associate with every room: burning his hair on the stovetop as a child, petulant tug-of-wars with his sister over their toys, tossing a volleyball all alone in his backyard, study sessions with the third-years in his living room, a tight hold on Kageyama’s hand to bring him into his home, his family and Kageyama forming a circle around a heart-shaped cake, the drastic pull on his stomach as Kageyama leaned in to brush his lips to his cheek, pulling away at the last second and their heads colliding, an accidental glimpse at Kageyama’s chest as he changed into a borrowed pajama top, staring up in the pitch dark at Kageyama sleeping evenly on his bed and aching, just aching.
Hinata had been in his home, in his bed late night—staring at his thumb and remembering the brush of it against Kageyama’s forehead, thinking of Osaka and the way Kageyama said good like he, too, could not imagine a life where the two of them were not together—when he’d realized he was in love with the boy.
He pastes a big smile on his face. “I liked growing up here. People from other schools always called us nobodies or bumpkins, but I love this town.”
Leaving it someday soon would be a difficult passage.
Kageyama seems to know what he’s thinking when he lets out a small sigh. “You can always come visit.”
Hinata looks at him quickly, taken off guard by his perception, before his bottom lip slowly protrudes. He stares at the trail ahead of him, pouting. “I guess. It won’t be the same, though. Everyone will be gone.”
Kageyama rolls his eyes. “They’re not dying. They can come visit, too.”
They reach the top of a particularly steep incline and brace themselves for the jog down, holding on firmly to the groceries hanging from their arms. Neither of them is out of breath just yet; Hinata has confidence in their stamina and their title as the star duo of an athletics team.
He fixes the bag on his wrist to a more comfortable position, then squints up at Kageyama. “What about you? Will you visit a lot?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I wasn’t planning on it. Seems pointless when my parents are barely home anyway.”
Hinata puts his lips together and hums, but says nothing. He has an inkling of what Kageyama’s relationship is like with his parents, but has never properly asked. Maybe one day the boy would be open enough with him to share all on his own, but Hinata can only wait for that day.
“There are other people you can visit, you know,” he says instead, pointedly.
Has it never occurred to Kageyama to visit him once he’s gone?
He hears Kageyama’s sharp inhale, sounding more like a hitch of his breath when it lodges early on in his throat. Then he says, hesitantly, “If you say you want me to…”
“I want you to,” Hinata blurts out.
This is one of those moments when he is candid without feeling embarrassed, like his bold declarations in first-year about becoming the ace, or admitting to Kageyama that he really was incredible, or telling Kageyama that he would make him invincible. He wants Kageyama to come around during the summer months, and Christmas, and New Year, and Golden Week, and every other holiday, and even some mundane weekends in between. He wants Kageyama near him, and after three years together, there is no shame in admitting such a thing.
The thing about his sincerest moments is that they always seemed to hit Kageyama especially hard. His mouth would part, without sound, and he would stare unblinking at Hinata with a blank look that suggested he had never received such kindness in his life before.
He looks at Hinata this way now.
“What?” Hinata laughs. “Did you think I would tell you to pack up and get out of my life once we graduate?”
It takes an excruciatingly long time for him to finally respond. “…No.”
It’s not very believable at all.
Hinata thinks of his conversation with Yachi inside a deserted corridor, about how Kageyama was afraid of moving on from Karasuno, afraid that he was losing his teammates. He thinks of Kageyama at practice the past month, yelling at everyone with intensity that seemed to build as time passed. He remembers Kageyama admitting to him, caught in an argument outside the gym, that the looming threat of graduation had finally caught up with him now that they were so close to the end.
“Hey, Kageyama? Let’s keep in touch, okay?” he says, smiling up at him. The bags on his arm slip and crash together when he holds out his little finger. “Pinky promise.”
Kageyama chews on his bottom lip. “Stupid. Obviously we will.”
“H-Hey, don’t go around saying ‘obviously’ when you’re the loose cannon here. You’re awful at keeping in touch with people.”
“I’m not awful!”
“You don’t know how to type more than one-word answers to text messages,” Hinata accuses. “And you never come when we all invite you to hang out. And you’re saying, what? That you’ll get on a train for five hours to come visit whenever I want? You’re barely willing to take a bus downtown when I invite you to the coffee shop.”
“But I did, didn’t I?” Kageyama shoots back.
At that, Hinata slowly puts his hand down. He can’t contest that. Kageyama had come, albeit a bit late and in frustrating circumstances, but if he was to be believed, it was all because Hinata had asked him to be there.
This should be a happy realization. Hinata’s not sure why instead he feels prickly and bothered, that suddenly Kageyama was being so obedient after three years of diligently inviting him places had always amounted to nothing.
“Why did you come?” he asks, and tries not to sound like he’s accusing him of things, but he doesn’t quite succeed.
“What do you mean? You told me to.”
“But why yesterday of all days?”
“I told you, the flier—"
“Forget the flier!” he snaps, crabbily, visibly startling the boy with his unexpected outburst. He can’t help it; he’s suddenly annoyed. “So what if the flier had a date on it? Why did me giving that to you work over all the other times I straight out asked you to visit? You had so many other chances. What changed?”
You weren’t really there for a date, were you?
He’s petty, he feels so petty. It should be enough that Kageyama had been with him last night, that he was with him this morning. But it’s not. Suddenly there’s this unbearable itch under his skin as the thought comes to him, plunking down cold in his stomach, that perhaps Hinata had invited him so they could be together and Kageyama had seen it as an opportunity to take out the girl from class two. He couldn’t possibly stand it if that were true, couldn’t stand seeing his face right now, couldn’t stand being next to him.
Kageyama seems discomforted by the turn in conversation, but the look on Hinata’s face—he wonders what kind of face he’s wearing, whether he looks angry or like he’s about to cry—keeps him rooted in the moment.
He fidgets with a grocery bag, a tick on his cheek, then admits, “I didn’t know you’d be working yesterday.”
Hinata’s stomach swoops at this. “S-So, what? You wanted to be there when you knew I wouldn’t be?”
“I thought you would be there,” Kageyama grumbles. “I just didn’t know you’d be working.”
“Why would I be there if I wasn’t working?”
He looks choked by the question, as if Hinata was wrangling his neck and demanding answers rather than just angling his head in confusion. “Stupid, it’s not… I mean, obviously it didn’t mean anything, but—the flier was pink with hearts and crap all over it, what else could it—forget it!”
He snarls into Hinata’s face before thundering on ahead, and birds take flight from tree branches to flee when he approaches. The back of his neck is steadily rising in color. He looks like those times early in their Karasuno years, when he’d be reminded again of middle school and his last match and King of the Court—red-faced with his heckles raised, on guard from the rest of the world, but with an underlying touch of insecurity in his temper. He looks like he wants to crawl under a rock and never be spoken to again.
Hinata catches his mouth from falling open when the realization crashes into him all at once. “Y-Y-You thought I was inviting you out on a…” He squeaks. “You thought I-I was asking you…”
“So what?” Kageyama barks, an edge in his voice. He’s shaking from head to toe. “Stupid Hinata, it’s all your fault! You said you were only gonna work until a little bit before Valentine’s, but you still wanted me to go—what else would I think!”
Hinata stares, feeling fuzzy on the inside like when the TV signal gets interrupted and all he can see is a grey, static screen until he wiggles the antennae a little bit. He thinks of Kageyama showing up out of the blue, staring at him secretly as he went about doing his job, the complicated look in his eyes as he assessed the tart and what it meant, the flash of anger on his face when Hinata had said those foolish things.
Hinata hears himself stutter, automatically, “Th-they needed workers, and I went a little overboard buying gifts, so… I-I needed the money. And I didn’t have plans that day, anyway. And—and—why didn’t you say anything?”
Kageyama glares. “You said me dating someone was weird.”
“I didn’t mean…” His ears burn, remembering his jealous outburst. He doesn’t know how to admit what he had really meant; what if Kageyama thinks he’s a lesser person for it? “What about before that, why didn’t you say anything?”
He frowns, his brows meeting in the middle. “The fight. You wouldn’t talk or look at me. I didn’t know what it meant.”
He’d probably thought Hinata completely hated him or had taken back the invitation. Kageyama’s mind worked in extreme ways like that. He’d probably sat alone in his bedroom the morning of, wondering what this new distance meant for their relationship or whether Hinata would still be waiting for him to show, before choosing to take the calculated risk himself. He’d probably sat between the couples in the cozy little shop, glaring into his coffee and wondering why Hinata wouldn’t talk to him.
I feel so bad for him, Suzune had said. I think the poor guy’s been stood up.
“Oh, my god.” Hinata closes his eyes, in abject horror. “Oh, my god, you’re so stupid.”
There’s a noise of indignation and he senses more than hears Kageyama gearing up for a noisy argument, but derails him with a soft groan. “We’re both so stupid.”
Kageyama likes him. He’d been expecting a date and he’d shown, he wants to date Hinata. And Hinata doesn’t know how long Kageyama has liked him, but he knows how long he’s liked Kageyama. He knows he’s been lying awake at night remembering stupid things like the velvet touch of his flesh, grappling onto ways they could stay together after graduation, imagining being pressed to Kageyama’s body in deserted school corridors. He knows his bones have been aching but not as much as his chest, when he sees Kageyama in his dreams and is reminded of how little time together they have left. He knows he likes Kageyama wholly, unbearably, like gravity weighing on his shoulders.
But he’d rather die than admit to the boy how much of a coward he’s really been about the whole matter.
“You!” he crows, scurrying to catch up. “Why didn’t you say anything!”
Kageyama looks annoyed. “I told you—”
“You should have still said!” A second grievance enters his mind, and he blanches. “You really think I’d ask you out in such a lame way?”
“How would I know how you would ask me out, dumbass?”
Hinata swallows thickly and then, face burning, looks him straight in the eye and says, “I-I’d do it like this.” He snatches one of Kageyama’s hands—which isn’t as romantic a gesture as he’d hoped, because their grocery bags smash together and Kageyama jumps a little from the scare—and squeaks, with all of his courage, “Please go out with me!”
He is met with a blank look. Kageyama slants his head, appearing confused. “O…kay?” he says, in a tone that clearly means thanks for showing me, I guess, but I wasn’t actually asking.
Hinata groans, feeling robbed by those few seconds of tension. “Wow, you really are stupid.”
“H-Hey!” A fist thrusts out seeking his face, and Hinata instinctively dodges just in the nick of time.
“Don’t hit me, stupid!” he squawks. “I’m asking you out for real!”
Kageyama grinds down on his teeth, flash of anger passing through his eyes. “Keep your damn pity to yourself!”
Hinata feels anger course through him now, too, at those words. Hot, angry tears prick at his eyes but he blinks them back; he won’t cry in front of Kageyama, he won’t, he won’t humiliate himself. But he’s shaking from the sheer frustration of his feelings not getting across, and seethes, “You think I somehow made myself like boys because I pity you?”
Kageyama fizzles at this. The flood of raw emotions on his face trickle into a blank stare, eyes blinking mechanically.
“You like boys?”
Hinata bites down on his lip, hard enough for it to hurt. The truth is, he’s never pondered this particular piece of his crush. Making boys laugh doesn’t make his palms sweat the same way they do around pretty girls. He’s not tempted to stare inside changing rooms, he doesn’t breathe in a boy’s scent and feel drunk from the sensation, he doesn’t dream slow and languid dreams about boys that make his stomach squirm shamefully in the night—except for Kageyama. But Kageyama was a boy, so liking him and his scent and his body must mean Hinata liked boys. Maybe.
He shifts, nervously. “I don’t really know, but I just… I like you?”
Kageyama looks thoroughly strangled in return. “D-Dumbass, don’t…”
“I’m not pitying you,” he hurries to add, in case more misunderstandings arose. “Last night when you came in, if I had known you were there for a date, I would have quit on the spot!” His nose scrunches, after a moment to think. “Well… Okay, maybe not. But I definitely would have done—something.”
Something to show Kageyama how much he wants this, how much he’s been wanting this.
If he could do last night differently, he would have marched straight up to Kageyama’s isolated table in the corner of the shop and asked him everything, about the pink envelope, about girlfriends and dating, about his feelings. He could go back even earlier than this, not have skipped that darned practice and begun their wretched fight, just told Kageyama that Osaka was not a possibility anymore and he was disappointed, angry, so desperate to still stay together. Or perhaps, when Kageyama had asked him “What are you doing?” in his low, rumbly voice, shivering under the mountain pass with his thumb grazing the boy’s forehead, Hinata should have just told him, “Falling in love with you.”
He tells him now.
“I know you’re leaving soon, but I don’t care,” he says, resolutely. “I just like you.”
The rosy red of Kageyama’s cheeks could have passed as a consequence of the frigid morning, but Hinata knows better. Kageyama likes him too, likes walking him to their usual spot, likes eating pork buns together on the steps of the corner store, likes him so much that he fears sometimes how he’ll go on if the two are no longer side-by-side. He doesn’t have to wonder anymore, what Kageyama was imagining all those times they talked about a future together. It’s an airy feeling, like being set free.
“I’ll take that constipated look on your face to mean you like me, too,” he teases, daring to lean in close and smile up at him innocently.
Kageyama pitches forward, scowling. “I’m not making that kind of face!”
“Yeah, you are,” he laughs, side-stepping away from the oncoming jab. “You look like you’re gonna explode ‘cause you like me so much, but I’m not falling for the cute, I’m not!”
He flushes down to his neck. “S-Stupid, don’t say things like that.”
“What, that you’re cute?” The red intensifies, and he smirks. “Or, that I like you?”
Kageyama’s knee-jerk reaction is to make a grab for his hair, though Hinata deflects his hand and, giggling madly, goes running up the sloped path shouting "I like you!" to the sky. It’s the most freeing feeling, releasing the words out into the world, like he’d been fighting a battle he didn’t even realize and, after so many months of dragging his heels, he’s finally come out on the other side as the victor. Kageyama is racing after him, face fluctuating between looking violent and actually shy, but it doesn’t feel like he’s being chased; it feels like they’re moving towards something together.
The future, once so bleak and uncertain, looks bright.
The icy snow piled up on pavements slowly begins to dissolve into spring. The night air is still frigid and too airy for rainfall just yet, but the afternoon breeze is sometimes warm and soothing, and the casters on TV have already begun predicting the coming of cherry blossoms with the approaching season. For the students at Karasuno, it all serves as a prelude to their graduation in one week’s time.
Hinata takes advantage of this nice weather, squeezing his way through pedestrians at the busy shopping arcade and squeaking “excuse me!” whenever someone fails to notice him coming from the opposite direction. He narrowly avoids such an oncoming collision, but is startled by the hand suddenly clamping his shoulder.
“Slow down, idiot,” Kageyama growls next to his ear. “You nearly toppled over the display back there. Who’s gonna pay for it, huh?”
“I can’t slow down, Kageyama, I’m just so—gwahh!” He mimes an explosion over his chest as if to mimic what his heart is currently doing. “The senpai are coming, I really want this party to go well, they’re sold out of party poppers everywhere which is just weird, Yachi-san said the cake has the wrong writing on it, and—"
Kageyama claps a hand over his mouth. “Take a breath.”
Hinata pushes it off. “How can I take a breath when you’re covering my mouth?” he remarks, smartly. His eyes sink into slits. “Why are you so calm anyway? It’s your going-away-slash-congrats-on-going-pro party, but I’m the one who’s all stressed!”
Kageyama blinks. “Guest of honor privileges, I guess?”
“Translation: I’m the one doing all the work.”
“You’re the one who wanted to have this party anyway.”
“Oh, so it’s stupid now, is it?”
“I didn’t say that, dumbass!”
“Your tone implied it, jerk!”
A glaring content ensues right in the middle of the bustling plaza, which Hinata swears he only loses because someone knocks into his back as they busily saunter past, sending him toppling straight into Kageyama’s (stupidly broad) chest—and it’s fairly difficult to have glaring contests when they’re both suddenly wrapped up in each other’s arms, subtly breathing in each other’s scents and feeling the rest of the world go a little fuzzy from the contact.
Sometimes in the middle of volleyball matches, when the ball is up high and the blockers have formed a wall on the other side of the net, everything speeds way down for Hinata so that he can pinpoint the path of minimal opposition. This feels like one of those moments; everything surrounding them seems to decelerate into slow-motion, except Kageyama’s heartbeat and his own.
He clambers away first, flushing. “R-Right. So! Party poppers, and cake, and making it back in time, and, um, other things.”
Kageyama looks as if he’s still slowly making the descent back to reality. “Huh?”
Hinata tuts impatiently and takes two of Kageyama’s fingers into his hand, tugging him back into the shopping arcade where he can vaguely see a crafts store in the distance. “Time’s wasting, Kageyama!”
“Stupid, people are watching,” he hisses. The tips of his ears dust pink as he eyes the crowd, but he still lets himself get pulled along.
“Who cares? There are plenty of boys holding hands in here.”
“Those are kids.”
“Well, then,” Hinata laughs, beaming over his shoulder. “Let’s be kids, too, just for today.”
Kageyama glares at the floor grumbling incoherent things, which Hinata translates from Kageyama-speech to mean he was not wholly displeased.
The last of their remaining errands work themselves out somehow. They visit two more stores before Hinata is able to finally locate party poppers in a more secluded crafts store, along with a very cheap multi-pack of colorful sparklers. Yachi calls, apologizing profusely, and explains that the writing on the cake was not wrong after all, but that she had accidentally picked up the wrong cake in the first place; Hinata is glad for this, for it saves them the trip down to the bakery themselves so he can order Kageyama to put on his most intimidating face in front of the owners.
They never properly hold hands, never cross over the line of Hinata firmly grasping two of his fingers and keeping them together, but there’s a thrill in just the act of physical connection.
Hinata eventually leads them out of the arcade, out under the purple sky.
If he listens closely, he can hear the mechanical workings of Sendai Station nearby: the trains turning on the tracks, the bell-tones of travel passes being used, the clunking of activated turnstyles. Hinata tries to ingrain these sounds into his mind, familiarizing himself with them; they’ll be background noise every time he picks up Kageyama there, when he arrives for a visit.
But they walk in the opposite direction of the station.
“Come on,” Hinata says, eagerly bringing Kageyama along. “We’ve got some time. I wanna go visit everyone at the coffee shop!”
They walk away from the plaza and along the extended streets of the shopping arcade, and the noisy buzz of people soon turns into a collection of intermingling trees, alive and electric Ichibancho dissolving into tranquil and forested Johzenji-dori. They stroll along the promenade, looking at the passing scenery with interest. If it was properly spring, if the trees were bursting with leaves and provided them with proper cover, Hinata might have felt bold enough to hold Kageyama’s hand. But the trees are only branches still, this early in the season, so they make do with walking unusually close together.
Suzune is alone at the counter when they enter the shop, and perks up at the sight of them.
“Hinata, bless you! You came to see me?”
“Uh-huh!” He balances on his toes to sneak a look past her, into the kitchen. “Is Manager-san here, too, so I can pay him my greetings?”
She rolls her eyes. “His girlfriend is here, so I’m sure they’re canoodling in the back room.”
Hinata has only met their manager’s girlfriend once, but he remembers flowing brown locks, and eyes alight with mischief even behind thin frames and the general aura of being an adult. He turns towards Kageyama, who’s quietly standing behind him and teetering back and forth on his heels, and tells him, “His girlfriend is Futakuchi-san’s sister.”
No recognition flashes through his eyes.
“You know, Futakuchi-san?” Hinata presses. “He was captain at Datekou in our first and second year? He’s super tall, and sometimes his smiling face is, like, really scary? He and Ennoshita-san almost broke each other’s hands during their captains’ shake at their last Spring High!”
Kageyama looks completely bewildered.
“Oh, forget it,” he mutters, with a roll of his eyes. “You’re hopeless.”
“I’m not hopeless.”
He snorts. “You wouldn’t remember your own name if it wasn’t stitched into your underwear.”
Kageyama proceeds to put him in a headlock and bark at him to take it back, and Hinata pretends to fight back but mostly just wriggles in his arms and tries to stop giggling under his breath.
Suzune stares back and forth between them, taking special interest in Kageyama. She looks confused for a moment, before a realization seems to dawn on her and she noisily snaps her fingers. “Oh! You’re the boy who got stood up that one time!” She blinks at Hinata. “What is this? Did you two somehow become friends after that night?”
Hinata sheepishly unwinds the arm around his neck. “Umm. Something like that.”
Kageyama looks at him in question, but he chooses not to explain.
Their visit to the shop is kept short, just long enough to exchange a few words and bow politely when their manager and his girlfriend peer out from the back room. On their way out, Suzune calls after them, “I’m so glad you’re coming back to work here soon, Hinata. It’s been so boring without you.”
Hinata grins, and is last seen holding up a peace sign before Kageyama takes him around the neck and drags him away. The wind chimes above the patio tinkle when they depart.
The bus is predictably crowded on a lazy evening such as this one. Hinata doesn’t mind; he lets Kageyama press him between his chest and the window, a hand placed next to his head to keep him from jilting too far if they jumped, and bites down on a pleased smile when he realizes it had been an unconscious move. The bus ride is fairly bumpy, but Hinata doesn’t feel the motion.
For once, their stop is not one of the last on the route. They disembark just outside a sleepy neighborhood, where all the curtains are drawn in the house windows and they’re caged in by grey cement walls rather than green shrubbery. The other third-years are already there waiting, packed together on the street, when they arrive at Kageyama’s home.
Hinata breaks into a jog to cross the distance. “We’re not late, are we!”
“We’re just early,” Yachi assures him.
“Oh, good.” He impatiently waves Kageyama forward. “Chop chop, slowpoke! Let us in already!”
“Watch it,” Kageyama growls at him, as he digs his keys from his pocket. “Just because I let you get away with offering up my house all on your own…”
“Don’t be so stingy,” Hinata chides him, pulling open the door to usher everyone inside. “I’d have offered my house but it’s way out of everyone’s way. You can’t expect people to climb over a mountain just to have a party for you, you know. And you said your parents will be out tonight anyway!”
Kageyama grumbles something before purposely stomping inside.
Yamaguchi is the last one to duck in through the doorway, holding the cake he had most likely taken from Yachi. Kageyama flicks on a light, even though it’s not completely night yet and there’s stray sunlight filtering in through the window. Since the morning of the confession, Hinata has only been to Kageyama’s home once, and he is once again taken off guard by how completely barren it is inside. A few pieces of dull furniture are scattered about, but there are no pictures, no markings on the walls, not much warmth.
“We need to liven this place up,” he remarks, ignoring Kageyama’s pointed glare. Digging into the plastic bag in his clutch, he picks out a colorful packet of balloons and tosses them towards Tsukishima, who catches them just in time but mostly on instinct. “Here, Tsukishima. You blow these up.”
Tsukishima raises a single brow. “You want to try that again?”
“Please, oh, great Tsukishima, please grant us thy heavenly breath to help blow up these balloons.”
Yamaguchi takes the packet from the scowling blond, meshing his lips together to smother the laughter peeping through. In first-year, he might have snarked at Hinata to leave his precious Tsukki alone, but the two have grown much closer since that time so long ago.
Hinata is still over-the-moon delighted that Yamaguchi had decided to stay in Sendai with him following graduation. He could have gone somewhere more renowned with his grades, but Yamaguchi’s life plans have never been much grander than obtaining a simple accounting degree to follow in his father’s footsteps. He and Hinata might not see each other on a college campus, but they’d share shifts again at the coffee shop they had both chosen to return to, and it feels like enough. That’s one less person he’ll have to fear losing after their high school journey is over.
Yachi pokes her head out from the kitchen, her phone pressed to her ear. “Hinata, I’m calling the chicken place to put in our order. Is it okay if I ask them to deliver within an hour?”
Hinata flashes her a thumbs-up sign. “That’ll be perfect!”
Smiling, she disappears again behind a flutter of her blonde locks.
Yachi would be with them for a while yet. As she had explained, the school year in America wouldn’t start until after the summer season had passed, meaning there were still many months left until they had to say goodbye to their sprightly manager.
Hinata glances secretly at his fellow middle blocker, who’s angrily knotting a balloon. He’s still not sure where Tsukishima is going—he had absolutely refused to share the information, as if afraid Hinata would fold himself into his luggage and tow himself along—but he’s decidedly not staying in Miyagi. Hinata’s not bothered, though; he knows he can ask Yamaguchi for updates on the boy whenever he’s wondering.
Then there’s Kageyama, who was set to depart just two days after their graduation ceremony.
But Hinata tries not to mull on this too much.
Instead he migrates over to the couch, where Kageyama is lounging without even lifting a finger to help, and tosses a packet of streamers that collides with his chest. When he looks, Hinata builds himself up and tells him, “Make use of your height and hang those around, would you?”
Kageyama narrows his eyes, and he semi expects an argument or at least to have the streamers thrown back at his head. But that was an older Kageyama, from before their intimate conversation on a mountain pass, before their revelations about mutual feelings. This new Kageyama is huffy yet obedient, and reluctantly gets to his feet to do as asked.
“Stop smiling so hard, stupid,” he mutters, and flicks Hinata’s nose as he passes.
“Can’t help it,” Hinata responds, grinning harder. “I’m happy.”
He’s happy, truly happy, light on the inside like he’s drifting among the clouds. He has his friends near, he has a future planned out, he has Kageyama in ways that once made his bones ache and his knees weak to just think about. And like some twist in a crazy fantasy world, Kageyama has accepted him in return.
It would be a near impossible task, Hinata thinks, to find someone in the world who was happier than he was in this moment.
For the rest of the evening, they’re busy with their preparations; balloons and streamers have to be hung, a party hat has to be forced upon Tsukishima’s head, the cake has to be remembered and hurriedly shoved into the fridge before it completely melts. The upperclassmen were due to arrive in less than an hour’s time, and a sense of anticipation begins to condense in the living room. The old third-years would have no trouble taking a bus over from their respective universities, but Daichi, Sugawara, and Asahi (the old-old third-years) had made a special weekend trip out of their visit so they could come. Everyone is jittery over the reunion.
Hinata’s stomach is squirming when he looks about the room and suddenly realizes they’re missing someone.
Kageyama had disappeared up the stairs some time ago and had yet to come back down.
He eyes his teammates. Yachi is busy rearranging the food on the table for the tenth time, and Tsukishima is preoccupied with whatever Yamaguchi is trying to show him on his phone. His sock-clad feet provide a buffer to any noise when he quietly slinks out of the room unnoticed, retracing Kageyama’s steps up the stairs to where he knows his bedroom to be.
Kageyama is pulling his hoodie over his head when Hinata suddenly appears in his doorway. His shirt rides up with it, exposing the taut muscles of his back and the slope of his shoulder blades, and Hinata grins appreciatively.
“I could get used to this.”
Kageyama’s eyes snap to his, before the implication sinks in and he promptly turns crimson. Quickly pulling down his shirt, he demands, “What are you doing up here?”
Hinata leans casually against the doorway, arms crossed. “Just making sure you weren’t trying to be an antisocial hermit. Everyone’s coming for you, you know.”
He rolls his eyes. “I was just hot and wanted to take off my jacket, that’s all.” He tosses his hoodie over the back of his desk chair, pockets his phone, and moves towards the door. “Let’s go down.”
Hinata presses his lips together, then fully moves into the room and shuts the door behind him, trapping them both inside. He looks back at Kageyama’s startled face and tells him, uncharacteristically serious, “Sorry, I lied. I actually wanted to talk to you about something, before everyone else gets here.”
“…Oh.” Kageyama shuffles from one foot to the other, seeming disturbed. “What is it?”
Hinata has to smile, seeing the raw emotions flickering across his face, a subtle sense of fear lying beneath the surface of them all. “You can relax,” he laughs, and the sound seems to dispel the dark cloud in the room. “I’m not about to take back my feelings for you or anything like that.”
“Oh. W-Well, don’t say things with that serious face!”
“Right. Sorry. My bad.”
Kageyama grumbles. “What is it, then?”
“Mm.” Hinata hesitates for a moment, pondering over him, then waggles a few fingers to wave him closer. “Come here.”
“What?”
“Come here. To me.”
“Why?” He frowns, leaning back on one heel as if on the edge of taking a step back instead. “Say it from over there.”
Hinata sighs loudly, a noise of frustration. “Why are you scared of getting near me? Is it because we’re alone in here? You think I’ll jump you?”
“No. And I’m not scared.”
“Then, come here.”
“You—”
“Hug me.”
Kageyama suddenly looks so small that it takes effort not to crack a smile. He looks like he’s got flowers blooming in his stomach, like he’s struggling not to start choking up daisies. Hinata enjoys this part of their new relationship—the part where Kageyama looks always stunned yet absolutely smitten with every intimate thing he says.
When he simply continues to stand there, a red-faced pillar of teenage arousal, Hinata patters across the room and slants into his chest. The cotton of Kageyama’s shirt feels scratchy against his cheek, but smells clean like laundry detergent and body spray. Hinata fists the fabric and claws Kageyama closer, unabashedly pressing them together.
“This is the part where you put your arms around me,” he says, pointedly.
Obedient arms come around his back to cage him in, clumsy in their action. Kageyama is colored like a plum but staring at him fiercely, as if he has just been issued a challenge and he was adamant about not losing. “Is this what you wanted to talk about?”
“Mmm.” Hinata nuzzles into his shirt, sighing, “No, but I forgot what I wanted to say all of a sudden.”
“Stop playing around, stupid.”
But he doesn’t move his arms away.
Hinata smiles into his chest, before angling his head back so they could see each other’s faces. Kageyama looks soft; the edges of his perpetual frown aren’t prickly as usual, and his eyes are alight with an emotion that burns like anger but furls with insecurity. It hits Hinata then, perhaps for the first time, that he really, truly has Kageyama Tobio in the palm of his hand. He could break him if he wanted, he could hold on to him forever if he wanted, he could take his everything and give him everything—and it doesn’t scare him one bit.
Looking back into those eyes, trying to return even an ounce of that sincerity, he says, “I won’t lose.”
The emotion on Kageyama’s face turns into a question.
“You know there aren’t any strong volleyball colleges in Sendai,” Hinata mumbles. “Even if there were, I probably wouldn’t be smart enough to get into ‘em. B-But, that doesn’t mean it’s over for me. You might have gotten a tiny bit of a head start, but I-I can still get scouted out of college. I’ll build from the ground up all over again if I have to, like what we did here at Karasuno.”
He frames Kageyama’s staggered face with his hands, thumbing his cheeks when he declares, “So don’t think I’ve given up on beating you! Don’t think you’ve won!” He brings them together until their noses could collide, and promises, unwavering, “I’ll catch up one day.”
Kageyama’s mouth parts, but he utters no sound.
Hinata falters a little in the silence, a bit embarrassed to have spouted such grand things in Kageyama’s homely bedroom, and finishes lamely, “That’s what I wanted to say.”
Hands wind around his wrists. He meets Kageyama’s eyes in surprise to find that they’re alight once again. Kageyama is smirking. He’s smirking like he does whenever Hinata takes people off guard, whenever spectators who expect nothing from his sprightly body are completely blown away by his skill on the court—that’s my partner, it says.
“Don’t make me wait too long.”
Hinata puffs up. “Of course not! You know I’m always hungry.”
The smirk broadens, and this time, he returns it in kind. It’ll feel strange and foreign, he knows, not playing on the same team as Kageyama anymore, whose tosses have become just as much a part of him as the black and orange-striped uniform hanging in his closet. But there’s an edge of anticipation paving his stomach, to grow in their time apart, to build himself into someone new, to show Kageyama such an evolution that he could feel proud calling him a partner. Imagining such a future leaves him feeling positively giddy.
Until then, they would always have this, Hinata thinks, carefully lacing their fingers together.
“Should we head down? I don’t trust Tsukishima near the cake.”
“Race you?” Kageyama suggests.
But Hinata shakes his head, then pulls them towards the door with a hazy smile. Kageyama obediently allows himself to be led, taken in completely by his half-lidded stare and the glassy look behind it. Fingers entwined, they leave the room together as one.
Summer this year feels muggy and sticks to skin like dewy rainfall. The middle months in Sendai never get as hot as Tokyo, but rain blows through with vengeance and leaves behind a tacky, humid heat. Hinata doesn’t mind this weather; the mountain air always smells minty like freshly cut grass after a nice shower, and he has Bokuto-approved T-shirts breathing dust in his closet that can finally see the light of day.
He pulls out the old Wisdom of the Ace T-shirt for this occasion, ratty now from overuse. While trying to yank it on over his head, he accidentally trips over the guest futon he had made in advance on his floor.
He stares at the bedding instead of getting up right away, trying to imagine a body lying here at night, imagines looking down from his bed with his heartbeat echoing in his ears. Being in the same room after so long, touching and kissing—heat coils and writhes inside his body just at the very thought. He’s shameless.
“Nii-chan?” Natsu calls from somewhere in the house. "You'll be late."
“R-Right.” He pulls himself to his feet, pockets his phone and his wallet, and races out from his home looking forward instead of back.
The mountain trail is muddy from last night’s rain, and drops of dew pepper across his neck when he passes under low-hanging trees. The journey is a quiet affair, but the station is predictably teeming with people despite the brewing storm clouds. Hinata doesn’t truly feel the tug of expectancy for the impending arrival until he hears a crackling voice over the speakers announcing an incoming train, and then his insides are squeezing together.
A swarm of people spew out of a hallway together as one, almost pulling Hinata along with the tide. He has to squeeze himself between passengers, opposing the flow and searching for a light at the end of the mob.
When he stumbles out the other side, a lone figure stands before him.
Kageyama lets his duffle bag fall from his fingers to slump at his feet. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a team logo stamped over his breast, bearing a name that holds substantial weight but one Hinata doesn’t recognize on him. But the boy himself is achingly familiar—and he’s here.
Hinata takes a shaky step forward.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” Kageyama says back.
Something curls along Hinata’s spine, up from his toes and along the curve of his back until it catches on to his mouth. His lips wobble and he bites down on them hard to keep them even, but it’s no use holding back the grin that splits across his face. Kageyama doesn’t smile, but he grumbles something at the ground that sounds like an affectionate insult. His cheeks have turned plump from their pinkish hue, and he looks happy.
Hinata looks forward to doing this many, many times over again.
fin.