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The end comes suddenly for them. One day they are kicking back for another day of volleyball practice and riling up the Grand King (name courtesy of one Karasuno shrimp) and then suddenly the graduation ceremony that marks the end of their short three-year high school life is today.
Hanamaki suddenly feels a gaping void in his life where high school, volleyball, and the friends who come with it used to be. It is a lot like having the floor under your feet all the time only to wake up one day, roll out of bed, and realise that it isn't there anymore.
He doesn't want to get out of bed today. The void is going to suck him in.
"Makki!" Something bounces off his window, startling Hanamaki out of bed anyway and he goes down in a flurry of blankets. He lands with a thump on the floor, which is still there and not gone, and it takes some expert manoeuvring to get him up and to the window.
"What?" Hanamaki shouts, punctuating that one word by throwing open his window with as much force as he can muster.
Matsukawa blinks back at him, his arm raised in the act of throwing another rock at Hanamaki's window. Then he grins. "You're going to be late to your own graduation!"
"That was the plan," Hanamaki mutters under his breath and Matsukawa squints up at him, trying to see what he is saying. "Be right down!" he yells out of the window and Matsukawa drops the rock and gives him a thumbs up.
It takes him less than fifteen minutes to shower, change into his school uniform, and bound out of the door with his breakfast half-stuffed in his mouth like some kind of shoujo heroine—or a barbarian, his mom had yelled at him as he passed her on his way out.
"Hey," Matsukawa says, half-leaning against his front gate, and it is a good thing he still has his school uniform to protect him from nosy neighbours who might take it upon themselves to report the suspicious-looking person harassing the Hanamakis because that is what he looks like exactly. Tall, dark, brooding, and throwing rocks at the window of the Hanamakis' only son. Tall, dark, and brooding usually looks good on Matsukawa but it is also all the identifying characteristics of a possible stalker and he won't have the school uniform to protect him after today.
"Hey," Hanamaki says, shelving that line of thought.
Matsukawa falls into step with him as they head down the road. "Deep thoughts?"
Hanamaki shrugs while chewing through his makeshift sandwich of bread and pork cutlet. Of course Matsukawa had picked up on that pause. "Just thinking about you heading down the life of crime."
"Am I good criminal?"
"The best. You've already got the looks down."
"Shame. I don't think they offer crime as a major where I'm going."
Hanamaki stuffs the rest of his breakfast in his mouth and mutters something incoherent around the soggy bread dangerously close to choking his windpipe, and Matsukawa nods seriously like he gets it even when Hanamaki doesn't even know what he is saying.
---
Graduations usually happen on bright, sunny spring days and theirs is no exception. Only that Hanamaki feels like he has swallowed a storm cloud and it is growing inside of him, expanding ominously with every classmate that pulls him in for a photo or when his parents show up for a quick "congratulations" and "we're so proud of you, son".
He kind of wants it to end, kind of doesn't want it to end, and he smiles reflexively for every camera aimed his way. He photobombs Oikawa and Iwaizumi's photos, pats Kindaichi on the back when he starts tearing up at the sight of his seniors graduating, and generally gets everywhere and nowhere until the crowd starts thinning out, trickling out of the front gates to wherever.
"Hey, the team's going out for lunch," Iwaizumi nudges him as he rounds up the other members of their volleyball club. "Ready your wallet. We're giving the juniors a treat."
"Can't we pin this all on Oikawa?" Hanamaki asks.
"If you and Matsukawa come up with something, I'm all ears," Iwaizumi tells him, already leaving to grab more juniors.
"He wasn't actually saying no," a voice in his ear points out.
"He'll split it with Oikawa on their way back anyway," Hanamaki says without turning around. "He's too honest a soul."
"Unlike us," Matsukawa says and Hanamaki can feel him hovering just by his shoulder like a second shadow except warm and tangible.
"I love the kids with all my heart but my wallet isn't as big as my heart." Hanamaki is weak, so weak, but he finds himself leaning back against Matsukawa just the slightest, turning to look him in the face as he raises an eyebrow and asks, "Got a plan in mind?"
Matsukawa raises an eyebrow back and with eyebrows like his, that is a whole lot of expression. "I do."
---
They end up at the nearest McDonalds, skipping out on the team lunch despite Iwaizumi's repeated reminders to show up at the gate in ten minutes. Hanamaki hadn't felt up to it anyway and he is somewhat thankful that Matsukawa's "plan in mind" had simply been not to show up. It is probably bad for team morale and Hanamaki feels slightly guilty thinking about the way Kindaichi had cried over their graduation the same way one would mourn a deceased dearly beloved. He'll make it up to them one day, take them out to lunch or dinner or something and drag Matsukawa into splitting the bill with him, but he just needs to be away from all that today.
"Are you feeling better?" Matsukawa asks as he picks a fry out of the giant pile of fries between them.
"Who me?" Hanamaki asks, frozen in the act of dipping his fry into ketchup, all deer in the headlights when he is trying to go for nonchalant.
"I don't see anyone else around that I know so yes, you," Matsukawa says. "For someone so pink, you've been really gloomy today."
"Gloomy how?" Hanamaki lets his shoulders drop, tired from holding them up all morning, as he slumps back in his seat.
Matsukawa shrugs. "Not the usual you."
"Not pink?"
"Like thirty percent pink. Maybe less." Matsukawa chomps into his fry without dipping it in any of the four condiments available before him, the heathen, and asks, "What's eating you? Graduation blues?"
It is Hanamaki's turn to shrug. "Something like that." He licks the salt off his fingers and reaches for his milkshake, holding it without really making an effort to bring it up to his lips as he tries to shape the storm cloud brewing inside him into a question. "Mattsun," he starts and finds the rest of it along the way, "aren't you sort of, kind of, scared about the future?"
"Terrified."
"You don't look it," Hanamaki says and then remembers Matsukawa from the morning, tall, dark, and brooding against his front gate, throwing rocks against his window when he could just let himself in like an honorary Hanamaki. His mother would probably feed him too. He's an idiot. "Oh."
Matsukawa smiles and it is a small, subtle thing but it is there. "Yeah."
He's such an idiot. He isn't the only one graduating today, isn't the only one struggling through scary thoughts of the future, isn't the only one heading irrevocably towards the future.
"I just never thought that high school would actually end, you know," Hanamaki admits, tightening his grip on his milkshake as he lets it all spill out of him. "It felt like one of those things that dragged on and on forever and then suddenly it's over and we've got our certs and the teachers never want to see us ever again."
"To be fair, the teachers probably didn't want to see us during school either."
"Point," Hanamaki says and slumps further down in his seat, dangerously close to sliding right down to the floor. "Volleyball's not going to be the same without you guys. You're probably going to pick it up in university and I'll join the alumni club or something."
"I wish we had the chance to play with the guys a bit longer," Matsukawa admits, tapping a fry against the tray distractedly, and the raw honesty in his voice makes Hanamaki's heart clench. "To the Inter High finals, to Nationals and beyond."
"I wish we had won against Karasuno."
"And Shiratorizawa."
"And Inarizaki and Itachiyama and all those other bastards out there," Hanamaki says loudly, fixing his eyes on the ceiling and trying not to mind the way his eyes have started to prickle uncomfortably. "Maybe if we'd gone far enough we wouldn't have to stop."
"That'd be nice," Matsukawa says contemplatively and Hanamaki can hear the smile in his voice. "Eternal high school. Think of all the tests, day after day after day."
"We'd ace them all if they keep us there long enough."
"You? Ace anything but Japanese?"
"I'll pass them all," Hanamaki amends, sitting up properly before his butt slides off the edge of the seat. "Moderately well. Good enough for eternal volleyball." The fries won't eat themselves and the milkshake won't taste as good melted so he eats and drinks and fights Matsukawa for the crispier fries as Matsukawa's hand inches forward on the table.
"Sounds like a good start," Matsukawa remarks and steals a fry right out of Hanamaki's hand.
---
"Wanna go crash the team lunch?" The fries are gone and Matsukawa shows his phone to Hanamaki. "Iwaizumi put the address of the ramen place in the group chat."
"Sure. It isn't like we have anything else to do now. Besides, I think Oikawa's still broke from the previous ramen place so we better go rescue Iwaizumi."