Chapter Text
There is only so much weird team dynamic Suna can take before he decides to bail. If it isn’t the twins being annoying as hell about playing their last tournament together, it’s Atsumu bullying the first years into taking Karasuno seriously.
It’s their third time at Spring Nationals, only on day two, that a first year looking like they’re about to faint, that tears it for Suna. If he has to hear one more goddamn thing about Karasuno and their ’demon pair’, Suna is going to have to murder the twins, and Gin will just have to be captain. In the interest of preserving the lives of his teammates, as well as his own sanity, He takes himself for a walk around the stadium concourse.
People-watching should be enough of a distraction so that he doesn’t end up inadvertently throwing Atsumu into a garbage can the next time he mentions Karasuno. Fuck, if he never has to hear their goddamn name ever again it’ll be too soon. A year of Atsumu droning on about them, both twins being sulky when they failed to qualify for the Inter-High, and all the game tapes he’d been made to watch, were all enough to make him dissociate just a little when anyone brought the fuckers up around him.
Hopefully that won’t happen in Inarizaki’s game tomorrow against the crows, because if Suna thinks Atsumu is annoying now, wait till Suna fucks up against his ’fated’ rivals. At least after tomorrow it’ll be over, come what may.
Now just to avoid thinking about Karasuno for a good couple of hours, that’s enough for him.
As if the gods are laughing at him, what does Suna see as he rounds the corner into the vendor’s hall? A fucking telltale black tracksuit. Grrreeat. He’s just about to turn on his heel and go back the way he came, when he notices that the spotted tracksuit is an awful lot lower to the ground than usual — too low even for that orange-haired psycho. Upon taking a closer look he can see the blonde swing of a ponytail.
Ah, their manager then.
After last year’s loss at Spring Nationals, it had been Gin who’d loudly complained on the way home about how unfair it was that not only had Karasuno come from nowhere to win, they also had the audacity to have not one, but two cute managers?
At the time Suna had shrugged, unbothered. Sure, there was an ice queen and a bubblegum sweet princess for managers, but it didn’t do them any good in the end. They ended up losing the next day anyways. And having cute managers always seemed bothersome to him . You have idiots like Gin and Kosaku who get all stupid and grandstanding around girls, so having some girl attend practice with them regularly sounds kinda annoying to him, honestly.
However nice the little bubblegum blonde is to look at, it doesn’t change that she is a distraction. Hey, if Suna is lucky maybe she is at the center of some sort of club intern love drama and her little band of second-year weirdos would play like shit tomorrow. A guy can dream.
Suna’s about to turn, completely disinterested in pursuing any more thoughts of Karasuno and their distractingly pretty managers — especially when he is going to have to deal with Atsumu’s bullshit when he rejoins the team — when movement out of the corner of his eye catches his attention.
Are those the representatives from Kanagawa? Suna blinks. What exactly are they doing? His eyes track the blonde manager bobbing and weaving through the crowd — impressive given she has her face tucked into a notebook. The players from Kanagawa prefecture bob and weave with her, several paces behind, heads bent low, just oozing creep factor. She looks none the wiser.
Suna sucks on his teeth. Welp, it isn’t any of his business. One of her teams nutjobs can come rescue her if she’s in trouble.
Despite that, he still finds himself unable to turn away, continuing to watch as the girl lifts one hand to tuck an errant lock of hair behind her ear. Behind her one of the taller boys elbows another, laughing — something in the sound makes Suna clench his teeth. Boys just being boys, right? It’s fine. Probably.
One of the creeps shoves another slightly forward, the other two smirking. They certainly don’t seem like infatuated school boys. Not when these bastards are so big and she is so tiny.
Hell, she’s probably shorter than Suna’s own sister — now in her last year of middle school. Oh goddamn hell. Why’d he have to go thinking about his sister? Her shoulders mimicking his own at a persistent slump, disinterested expression on her face as she wanders around with her nose in her phone. His sister definitely wouldn’t notice if some creeps were following her around either.
That thought cycles through his brain several times as he tries to unstick his feet from the ground and backtrack down the hall away from this bullshit. Goddamn, where the hell is her team to deal with this shit?
One of her stalkers makes a lewd gesture at his friends, making them laugh again and it’s enough to finally unstick his feet — not that he’s going the direction he wants. But some assholes need to learn a lesson. Suna’s pretty sure he’d kill someone for doing anything similar to his sister.
Swearing to himself Suna stuffs his hands into his pockets and moves to intercept the creeps. He steps in front of the gaggle of idiots, forcing them to stop short and and jump back otherwise they’ll run into him. pleased to see he’s taller than all of them. He looks down his nose at them, aiming for a Kita-level disapproving stare.
The Kanagawa reps stare at him baffled, before one of the dickheads decides it’s a good idea to try and step around him. Pressing his lips together, Suna obliges him and bends sideways to block his path, hands never leaving his pockets. That pulls the little bastard up short again.
“Can we help you?” King Dickhead asks, mouth pinched and hands curling into fists.
Suna’s expression doesn’t shift as he rightens himself and tilts his head. “Yeah.”
They look at him expectantly, King Dickhead and his Dickhead Jesters all puffing up with irritation. Suna would rather not get decked, but it feels like a vindicating enough lesson for the three bastards in front of him to get ejected from the tournament for smacking him around.
“What the fuck do you want?” King Dickhead snarls at him, taking a threatening step closer. It’s almost adorable, in the way a yappy puppy biting your ankles is. These idiots obviously don’t know that he was forged in the fires of Miya twins hostility. A bit of posturing ain’t shit to him.
Suna tilts his head back, pursing his lips like he’s thinking real hard about it, before he gives a lazy shrug. “How about you creeps walk on back to your team so we don’t have any problems here, hmm?”
The Dickhead Jesters at least have the grace to look mortified, already edging away. King Dickhead on the other hand looks a bit apoplectic, taking another useless step closer towards him. The asshole barely comes up to Suna’s chin. “Who’re you calling a creep?”
Welp, if he wants an honest opinion, may as well give it to him. “You. Don’t go following girls around.” Here Suna takes a step closer, hands still in his pocket as he bends in close, expression placid as all get out — he’s learned the key to being intimidating as hell from Kita. “Like the weird little creep you are, hmm?”
King Dickhead’s face flushes bright red, and Suna is certain he’s going back to Inarizaki with a black eye and the satisfaction that a creepy little weirdo ain’t going to have his time to shine at Nationals when a voice cuts through the noise in the hall. “Oh, please don’t fight! You’ll be ejected from the tournament.”
Suna looks over his shoulder to find Karasunos manager herself staring at him wide-eyed, notebook clutched in front of her, looking anxious as hell. The Dickhead Court takes that moment to bail, the Jesters grabbing their shitty King and dragging him away. Well this isn’t how he wanted this encounter to go at all.
Hands still in his pockets he turns to fully face her, giving her a shrug. “I didn’t start it.” That isn’t necessarily true, but he feels pretty certain he had the moral high ground in that whole interaction.
The girl blinks big, shiny brown eyes at him, her lips parting — she abruptly freezes, fingers gripping her notebook so hard it bends. Suna’s about to ask what’s wrong when she abruptly flails into a deep bow. “Number 10, Suna Rintarou-san from Inarizaki!”
Suna stares at her bowed head, utterly confused. What the fuck was that? “I’m number five now.” is what he comes up with.
She jerks to a stand, staring at him in horrified embarrassment. “Oh! Of course! I’m so sorry! I apologize! That was so rude of me!” And then she’s back to bowing, moving alarmingly fast. Suna has the brief mental image of an extremely contrite samurai declaring they’ll commit seppuku in the most irritatingly effusive way possible.
He hadn’t meant to humiliate her, what the heck is up with this reaction? Suna pulls a hand out of his pocket, trying and failing to catch her shoulder as she continues to bow at him, muttering under her breath about how sorry she is.
“Hey Karasuno, could you maybe stop for a second?”
She stills, halfway into the motion of another bow, looking up at him through long pretty eyelashes, cheeks flushed. Suna stares down a bit dumbstruck at her. What the heck happened to the cute girl-child with the side ponytail last year? Last year she had reminded him a little bit of Hello Kitty, with her sugar sweet smiles and anxious hand clasping. The girl in front of him now is all flushed rosy cheeks, big liquid brown eyes, and rosebud lips. How the fuck had she gotten this pretty in like, a year?
She says something, but Suna is so transfixed by the motion of her hand tucking a tendril of hair behind her ear that he completely misses it. She’s staring at him, expectantly.
“Huh?” he asks, extremely intelligently.
She licks her lips, face still flushed and Suna does his very level best to pay attention to her words and not her mouth. Yup. Good job Suna.
“Yachi Hitoka. I don’t know if you remember from last year, I’m a manager for Kara-”
“Yeah, Karasuno. I remember.” Goddamn does he kinda wish he remembered more of her than the time Osamu nearly nailed the scoreboard near her with one of his homerun serves. He’d thought it was hilarious the way she’d jumped back then.
Yachi looks a bit relieved, the grip on her notebook loosening fractionally. And then she starts gnawing on her lip and Suna’s pretty sure he’s never empathized with Gin so much before. Goddamn everything she does makes him a bit stupid.
“You know, you really shouldn’t be fighting in between games. It could get you ejected from the tournament.” Her fingers twist in front of her and she does that thing where she shyly looks up at him through her lashes again, or maybe that’s only happening because she’s so goddamn tiny. Either way it turns his brain into heated mush.
Feeling the need to explain himself, because he’s not some psycho who goes around picking fights — in fact, Suna is all about staying in his own lane, and never getting involved in other people’s junk, except to record it. For posterity. And blackmail. He says, “Yeah, those dumbasses looked like they were trying to be little creeps, so I, uh, tried to step in.”
Yachi’s brows pinch and her head tilts to the side in question. Does she have to look so goddamn cute doing everything? “Little creeps?”
Suna rubs at the back of his neck, flicking a glance over his shoulder where the Kanagawa dickheads had disappeared a moment ago. “Yeah, they looked like they were stalking you or something, so I figured I may as well... do something about it?” He hates how his voice goes up at the end, turning it into a question. Fucking lame.
Yachi however doesn’t look touched, or moved, or grateful in any capacity. Instead she leans around him to look down the hallway, before her nose wrinkles. “That’s very kind of you Suna-kun, but I’m pretty sure I can take care of myself.”
The ‘Suna-kun’ isn’t enough to take the sting of her dismissal away. Rocking back on his heels, he stuffs his hand back into his pockets and shrugs at her. suddenly feeling very stupid and silly. “Welp, I’ll take this as my cue to go then.”
“But it was very kind.” Suna stops halfway to turn and look at her. She’s beaming at him, and goddamn if she isn’t even prettier and glowy like that. “You’re a very nice person Suna-kun.”
Suna’s nose wrinkles, looking over his shoulder — god forbid one of his teammates witness this. “Look, I’m really not—”
He’s cut off by the feeling of a small hand on his forearm, causing him to turn back. While turning he notices how surprisingly close Yachi has gotten, her eyes squeezed shut and an adorable little blush dusting her cheeks. His head jerks to the side just as she leans in to press a kiss to his cheek, only that his new head position aligns their mouths and for a brief hairsbreadth of a second, Yachi Hitoka, pretty manager of Karasuno, presses a kiss to his lips.
Suna has barely half a second to process just how soft her lips are, and how she kind of smells like mint and air salonpas before her eyes fly open and she wheels backwards with a squeak. She drops her notebook and slaps her hands to her cheeks, now bright scarlet red. Suna stares at her a bit dumbfounded, unable to form a coherent thought. The girl looks like she might be hyperventilating. He’s pretty sure his cheeks are probably fucking rosy too.
Feeling otherwise useless, he bends down to pick up her notebook, holding it out to her.
Her gaze skitters from the outstretched notebook to his face and back to the notebook, eyes wide and too bright. And then she’s aflutter with too much nervous energy again. She swipes the notebook, throws herself into a deep bow. Squeaks a rapid, “I’m-so-sorry-oh-my-god-I’m-so-sorry-I-need-to-runaway-now-sorry!” and then turns on her heel and flees down the hallway.
Suna watches her go until she is well out of sight, still kinda flabbergasted how this happened. Though, stuffing the hands back into his pockets, he might actually has pep in his step as he makes his way back to the team. They’re playing her team tomorrow, right?
By now he smirks to himself. Maybe Atsumu has been onto something this whole time. Karasuno is definitely something to look forward to now.