Work Text:
Hinata tilts his head, biting his lip and turning his phone around in his hands. Tsukishima rests his chin in his palm, his brow furrowed as he watches Hinata mess with his phone.
After another three minutes, Tsukishima can’t take it. “What are you doing?”
“Snapchat,” Hinata answers.
"You know you take pictures with it, right?”
“Shut up Stingyshima,” he snaps, setting the phone down in a huff. Kageyama and Yamaguchi look up from their conversation. Hinata grabs a handful of the communal fry mountain and basically swallows it whole. “I sent a friend request to Yachi but she hasn’t accepted yet.”
Kageyama, who struggles to understand the logistics of a smartphone, says, “Did you spell the username right?” Tsukishima commends Kageyama for his basic knowledge of technology and Kageyama flicks a fry in his face.
Hinata pouts. “I think I did but she used the roman alphabet and Yachiii I’m not good with English!” His friends aren’t sure who he’s complaining too.
Yamaguchi pulls out his phone. “Here, Hinata, check Yachi’s username.” He hands Hinata the phone. Hinata flicks through Yamaguchi’s snapchat contacts, muttering that Yamaguchi has too many friends and finds Yachi’s name at the bottom. He holds down on her name and the little box pops up.
Applepie
He pales and quickly checks his phone. “Oh no no no no no no no! I sent a snapchat to a-p-p-l-e-p-i instead of a-p-p-l-e-p-i-e!”
“Didn’t he just spell the same thing?” Kageyama whispers to Yamaguchi who laughs – Kageyama might just be worse than Hinata at English.
“Send one to Yachi and stop complaining, maybe you’ll make a friend,” Tsukishima snips and slaps Hinata’s hand away from the fries.
Hinata sighs, quickly sending one to Yachi and waits to see if the first applepi will answer him. He doesn’t find out until he gets home later that evening.
After his shower, he’s sitting against the couch in shorts and a t-shirt, basking in the cool of the floor fan and one of the popsicles his mom bought that morning. Natsu’s watching an anime, laying on the couch behind him. He’s texting Kageyama about the training regime for the first years when a notification from applepi pops up.
He almost drops his phone. Switching to snapchat, he opens the snap from applepi. It’s a black screen captioned: I think you have the wrong person.
Hinata, without thinking, sends back a selfie captioned: haha sorry! It was an accident!
He doesn’t really expect a reply, he doesn’t even think anything about what he sent applepi but a few minutes later, he gets another snap. He opens it, inhales sharply and chokes on his popsicle. Damn, he’s hot. Hinata is surrounded by good-looking guys all the time (bless volleyball club) but applepi is gorgeous. (He’d long since grown out of his crushes on Kageyama and Tsukishima.) His blonde hair is pulled into a messy ponytail and there’s an awkward smile on his face that he sort of hides with a PSP.
it’s fine
That’s all the message says but suddenly, Hinata feels rejuvenated. Maybe he shouldn’t be making friends on snapchat with a stranger but he doesn’t care. Hinata likes making friends and applepi seems like a cool guy. They talk a little bit longer, Hinata learns his name is Kenma and he lives in Tokyo (SKYTREE?!?!?!) before Kenma disappears to play games.
"Your smile is creepy, onii-chan,” Natsu says, poking Hinata’s cheek.
“Natsuuu~!” he whines and whips around to tickle her.
“You actually made friends with applepi last night?” Tsukishima asks, in only a way Tsukishima could that infuriates Hinata.
“You’re just jealous I can make friends,” Hinata retorts, quickly sending a snap to Kenma about Stingyshima and his stingy-ness. Kenma sends back ‘lol’. Hinata snaps back a selfie with a smiley face.
Tsukishima flicks Hinata in the forehead. Hinata hisses at him. “Yikes,” Tsukishima says, pushing Hinata towards the gym for practice.
To say Hinata was distracted during practice was an understatement. He got tangled in the net – twice – and served the ball into the back of not only Tsukishima’s head, but Kageyama, Yamaguchi and Yachi as well. Kageyama only had so much patience for the distracted red-head and Tsukishima didn’t appreciate the bump forming on the back of his head.
“Hinata-kun, is something bothering you today?” Yachi asks, nursing her head with an ice-pack.
The story about applepi and Kenma spills out and Yachi laughs. She leans in closer to whisper, “Do you have a crush?”
Hinata snorts but he still blushes. “Yachi! I just met Kenma!”
She elbows him, waggling her eyebrows. “But you said he was the prettiest boy you’ve ever seen!”
“Shshshshshshshhhhhh!” Hinata claps his hand over Yachi’s mouth, flushing bright red. She laughs. His phone buzzes in his pocket and he pries his hand off Yachi’s mouth to check it. Kenma.
Yachi leans over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of this Kenma. Kenma’s sitting in the university library, bags under his eyes, headphones on and is resting on a huge stack of textbooks. Yachi hums appreciatively.
“He is pretty but are you sure he’s the prettiest boy you’ve ever seen?” She’s teasing him.
“Ack, yes,” Hinata says, angling his phone just right to get a moderately attractive selfie. “But we’re just friends,” he reiterates.
He’s serious, since he’s never even met Kenma. He only knows what he looks like and the few details he’s provided is all he knows about him. But he thinks Kenma is cool and wants to get to know him.
Over the course of the next few months, they snapchat more frequently. They’ve even exchanged phone numbers to carry out two different conversations at the same time over text and snapchat. Hinata suggested Skype a few weeks ago when texting and snapchatting wasn’t enough and they have skype calls regularly. Tsukishima thinks they’re dating.
The team is chilling outside Ukai’s, snacking on meat buns they tricked Kageyama into buying. Kurata, a first year almost as tall as Tsukishima has his fellow first year Yoshino in a headlock. Ukai is hollering for them to knock it off but they ignore him. There’s a half-eaten curry bun on his knee and he’s clicking through the 100-second-long snap from Kenma.
Kenma’s best friend Kuroo is hosting a huge party and as his roommate, Kenma is suffering through it in the corner with noise-cancelling headphones. There’s strobe lights, bottles of alcohol almost the size of Kenma (he took a photo to prove it) and the last thirty seconds consisted of Kuroo doing Jell-O shots off their friend Bokuto’s stomach.
Hinata laughs and sends Kenma a myriad of photos offering his greatest sympathies. Kenma sends back a low-angled selfie captioned suffering.
“You’re sure about going to Tokyo? Alone?” Tsukishima asks, watching Hinata dig through his bag to find his misplaced phone.
“Yes mom,” Hinata says, rolling his eyes, “seriously though, I didn’t know you cared that much.”
Yachi intervenes, “We just want you to be safe, Hinata-kun.”
“We can’t lose our Ace,” Kageyama adds and Yamaguchi pinches him. Hinata stands up, straps his bag to his back and shrugs.
“I’ll be fine, guys. I’m keeping contact with Kenma the whole time and he’ll be at the station to pick me up,” Hinata says for what feels like the fifteenth time. The train will be arriving any minute. “Okay, goodbye to all my irritating parents, I love you all – I’ll text Yachi to keep you guys updated.”
He waves and hurries off to the train that just pulled up. The moment he sits down he starts texting Kenma. He’s bouncing in his seat. He’s been wanting to meet Kenma so bad and when Kenma offered his couch, Hinata jumped on the first opportunity he could to get to Tokyo. He could only go for a weekend but he didn’t care so long as he could meet Kenma.
Two and a half hours seemed to stretch longer the closer he got to Tokyo. Kenma sends him a snap of him at the platform Hinata would get off at and Hinata’s heart jumps into his throat. He’s so close. The woman next to him gives him a strange look when Hinata practically starts to vibrate.
He’s out of his seat the moment the train starts to pull into the station, hurrying to the doors. Hinata catches a glimpse of Kenma’s signature pudding hair and his heart squeezes. He’s knows how much Kenma hates crowds but he’s here.
When the train stops, Hinata flies towards the blip of blonde hair he’d seen and suddenly, his world flips its axis. Seeing Kenma in person is so much different than over snapchat or Skype but somehow, he’s even more gorgeous. Hinata doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
Kenma pulls his mask down, a smile he reserves strictly for Hinata on his mouth, and Hinata knows exactly what to do with his hands. He throws himself into Kenma’s arms.
“It’s good to finally meet you, Shouyo,” he mutters in Hinata’s ear and returns Hinata’s hug. His voice is even nicer in person.
His voice is stuck for a moment but he manages a soft, “You’re more amazing in person, Kenma.” He smells exactly like what Hinata imagined, his hugs are just as good as he thought.
Kenma’s laugh lights a fire in Hinata’s belly. “You’re pretty amazing too, Shouyo.” The hug ended much sooner than Hinata would have liked. When they smile at each other, the world recalibrates and everything is amazing, wonderful, perfect. All thanks to a stupid spelling error.
It’s safe to assume they started dating after that.