Chapter Text
He doesn't feel anything immediately after the match. He stands alone at the sides when he is subbed out. He sits alone in the bus on the way back from the stadium, and the whole time he is numb. He whispers a greeting automatically when he gets home, but he is answered with silence. His parents are at work, and won’t be back until later. This is okay with him; he wants nothing more than to wrap himself in solitude and stay there.
The tears don’t come until after he’s buried himself in a mess of blankets. They come slowly at first, a tear dripping from one eye before being followed by a second tear from the other eye, and then they continue falling, and he makes no move to stop them. His breaths start coming in heaves, until he can barely get any air in his lungs. This, too, is fine with him. His chest burns from lack of air, and he does nothing but clench his hands into white-knuckled fists.
He's angry at the world, angry at himself, angry at how the day had played out. He is angriest at his team, who had abandoned him as soon as they felt that he was no longer an asset, as soon as he’d become more of a liability rather than their trump card.
He cries out all his anger and heartbreak, his tears not stopping until he finally falls asleep in exhaustion.
He doesn’t go to practice the next day. Neither does he go to the next, nor to the ones after. He avoids his teammates as much as he possibly can, and by the time they graduate, he is only part of the volleyball team in name. He doesn’t bother saying goodbye to anyone.
They were friends, once upon a time. He could have even called them his best friends. Being the only students from their year to join the volleyball team, they had bonded with each other almost from the start, and they had become friends before long. Kunimi, though quiet and rather lazy, was full of wit and sarcasm. Kindaichi was something of an idiot, but he was kind and optimistic, if a little short-tempered, and was the first to reach out to Tobio. Tobio was the only anomaly in their trio, socially awkward and too much of a volleyball geek to get along with most people. And yet they stuck with him anyway, tolerated all his idiosyncrasies, even as others looked at him askance and sometimes avoided him.
For all their differences, they work well together. Kunimi keeps them in line, tutoring them when they need it. He is also strategic, even if he’s reluctant to show it, and it becomes obvious in the rare times he actually gets into a game. Kindaichi is the mediator for whenever Tobio and Kunimi’s personalities clash too much, and he's a rather good spiker, considering that they're still in their first year; Tobio is sure that he’ll become even more formidable once he hits a growth spurt. Tobio doesn’t know now whether he actually contributed anything to their friendship, but back then he felt that he pushed them to become better at volleyball, to love the sport almost as much as he did.
Time passes; Oikawa and Iwaizumi graduate, and Tobio doesn't mention that one incident with Oikawa to anyone. He improves at volleyball by leaps and bounds. The rest of the team could barely keep up, until they couldn’t at all. Their coaches whisper that he is a genius, a prodigy, and aren’t they just so lucky that he's in their team?
But if he is so talented, if he is that much of a genius, then why can he not surpass Oikawa? Why can’t he keep the team together the way Oikawa did? So he pushes himself harder, tries to become even better so he can carry the team. And yet the better he became, the more the team got left behind, until it finally clicked. How could anyone catch up to him if he is the only one putting so much effort into it?
He's patient about it, at first, letting them know what they could be doing better as calmly as possible. And they would try, he’d give them that, but it just isn’t enough. They just didn’t run fast enough, didn’t jump high enough, didn’t spike hard enough, until he finally snaps and yells at them to do more, to be more active, to love volleyball just as much as he does and actually show it.
He doesn’t notice the change in his relationship with Kindaichi and Kunimi immediately. Kunimi gets snappier during their tutoring sessions, and since Kindaichi is usually the one with the short fuse, Tobio chalks it up to stress about their upcoming exams. Kindaichi is a little more cross about breaking up their fights, but Tobio assumes he's just tired about always having to stop them. Having lunch and hanging out with them feels strained, their conversations stilted, but Tobio supposes they are all just tired from school and volleyball. And then they start pulling away from him; Kunimi claims to be too busy to tutor him after school, but Tobio overhears him agreeing to Kindaichi when asked. Sometimes he can’t find them during lunch break, and Kindaichi refuses his offer of extra practice more often than not. This goes on for almost a month before he understands what’s happening.
‘They finally got tired of me,’ he thinks. ‘They probably think I’m more troublesome than I’m worth.’ Which is fine with him, really, he tells himself. He's used to being alone anyway, and he still has volleyball. He can live without friends, if they’ll all end up leaving him anyway.
And then they purposefully miss his toss, effectively taking even volleyball away from him, and all he can think is, ‘Oh’.
If he can’t have friends, and he can’t have volleyball, then what does he have left?
Karasuno shows him that he still has volleyball. He chooses the school mostly on a whim; all he wanted was to not be in the same school as his previous team was. He questions his decision, at first, unsure whether a team with such ragtag members is a team he’d want to be part of, but they quickly prove him wrong. They don’t just give him volleyball back―they give him a team he knows he can count on, a team that he knows will have his back and will push back whenever he gets too much.
They also give him a blessing in the form of Hinata Shouyou.
Hinata isn’t like anyone he’s ever met before. He’s loud, and full of energy, and besides occasionally angering him, sometimes just being around the ball of sunshine is enough to tire Tobio out. He isn’t very talented, but he has a lot of potential, and he works just as hard as Tobio. Even harder, sometimes, pushing his body to its limits and beyond. It challenges Tobio just as much as it inspires him, not that he’d ever mention that to anyone else.
Hinata also knows how to comfort him, even if they haven’t been working together for long.
The practice match with Aoba Jousai, seeing his former teammates on the other side of the net, sends a pang of pain through his chest, but he ignores it in favor of playing with his new team. Being able to set to people who actually want him to be there, as well as someone who can hit his best toss, is nothing short of exhilarating, and it doesn’t fail to keep him going through the match. Playing volleyball has never been as fun or as intense, even before things went to hell in middle school. The high it gives him lets him ignore the incredulous looks Kindaichi and Kunimi send him, as well as the animosity and resentment in Oikawa’s eyes that only he can see.
It doesn’t, however, stop the hurt he feels upon Kindaichi’s rejection of his apology. He's barely able to keep himself together afterwards, going through the motions of cleaning up at the gym and changing in the club room. He mumbles his thanks whenever anyone pats him in the back for the good match, but he doesn’t actually hear what they say. All he had ignored is hitting him all at once, and it leaves him almost as numb as he was last time. He doesn’t notice the looks that Daichi and Sugawara send each other, nor the soft words that the latter gives Hinata.
What he does realize is that Hinata is following him home, not making his way up the mountain like he usually does. Tobio sends him a glare, which they both know lacks its usual heat, but allows them to reach his house together. Hinata takes off his shoes at the foyer with a soft “Pardon the intrusion,” then jogs after Tobio. Tobio ignores him all the while, going into his bedroom and placing his bags on his table before setting himself listlessly on his bed. Hinata hesitates briefly by the door, but he gathers all his determination and approaches Tobio’s unmoving form.
“Kageyama...”
Tobio does not reply, choosing instead to look at a bare patch of wall on the other side of the room. Hinata bites his lip before nodding decisively. He pushes Tobio further onto the bed and climbs up, curling himself into the curve of Kageyama’s body.
“What―” Tobio stiffens and struggles to push him away, but Hinata clings onto his shirt. “What the fuck are you doing, dumbass?”
“I don’t know what you guys talked about,” Hinata begins, making Tobio stop his flailing, “but I know that you’re upset. You don’t have to tell me what happened. You don’t have to say anything. But you don’t have to keep it all in, either.” He lets go of Tobio’s shirt, only to drape one arm around him. “I’m here for you, for all it’s worth. I may be small, but you can still count on me. I promise not to tell anyone.”
Tobio is still for a few moments, but he slowly wraps his arms around Hinata and pulls him closer. His breath hitches once, twice, and then he is crying into Hinata’s hair, ugly, heaving gasps pulling from his lungs. Hinata stays quiet the whole time, simply rubbing his hand across Tobio’s back. He doesn’t know how long he spent crying, or when he falls asleep. When he wakes, his eyes are puffy and aching, his brain throbs in his skull, and he is alone in his room. Though the space beside him is cold, there is a glass of water on the table beside his head. There is no note, but it doesn’t matter. He falls back asleep with a smile on his face.
“I saw Tsukishima being confessed to earlier,” Hinata says offhandedly on their way home, absently bouncing a volleyball on his hands. Tobio gives an indifferent hum; he doesn’t particularly care about romance. Just being able to play volleyball is good enough for him.
“I wonder what it feels like to be confessed to,” Hinata continues. “No one has ever confessed to me, and none of my friends from middle school have girlfriends either.”
“Is that so,” Tobio replies noncommittally. He isn’t even really listening, at this point.
“Yeah, we didn’t really care about that kind of thing back in middle school, you know?” Hinata laughs, faltering with a squawk when the ball nearly falls. He manages to save it, however, and he looks at Tobio. “How ‘bout you? You ever been confessed to? Has anyone ever told you they want to brighten your dark, scowly heart?” he asks with another laugh, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Tobio gives him a disgusted look before he shrugs. “I never noticed if anyone was interested. I didn’t care about it either. All I wanted was to play volleyball.”
“’Didn’t’? ‘Wanted’?” Hinata repeats with a quirk of his head. “So does that mean you care now?”
Tobio thinks about it for a moment, but he shakes his head with another shrug in the end. “Not really,” he says, “though I suppose I’m a little curious about what it would be like.”
“Same here!” Hinata chirps. “I mean yeah, girls are really cute, and there are some like Kiyoko-senpai who are really pretty, but it’s not much of a priority, yanno?”
Tobio only grunts in reply, and Hinata moves on to another topic.
Later that night, in the safety of his room, Tobio briefly allows himself to entertain the fantasies he’d sometimes had in middle school, about thin, lightly-calloused fingers entwined in his own, and long legs tangled with his. His mind quickly brings up the fact that the fingers are pale while the legs are tanned, clearly belonging to two different people, and he is just as quick to squash the thoughts and shove them into a dark corner of his mind where he is likely to forget about them.
They are in their second year; they had won at Nationals a few months prior, bringing Karasuno back from the being the flightless crows, and Daichi, Suga, and Asahi had graduated not long after. Ennoshita had been chosen as the new captain, with Tanaka as his vice-captain. More first years had signed up for the club, drawn in by their big win, and club times have become even busier than before.
Things have changed between him and Hinata as well.
Hinata had come over one day, and they had played video games in Tobio’s room. They had started arguing about something again (Tobio cannot even remember what it was about anymore), and then they were wrestling each other into the floor. Tobio had straddled Hinata and tickled him, and somewhere between Hinata’s breathless laughter and Tobio’s evil grin, they had started kissing each other instead.
Hinata’s fingers were tangled in dark hair and Tobio’s hands were imprinting themselves on small hips when they finally pulled away with heavy pants, their lips swollen and wet with saliva. They only stare at each other for a few moments before they frantically move to opposite sides of the room. Their faces are similarly flushed, and they fail spectacularly at avoiding each other’s eyes, until finally Hinata runs from the room with a rushed “I need to go”.
They don’t talk about it the next day, but the day after that finds Tobio pressing Hinata against the school’s shed, with his hands on Hinata’s hair this time, and their lips locked together even fiercer than before. Tobio nips at Hinata’s lower lip, and Hinata sucks at Tobio’s in retaliation. He fiddles with Tobio’s belt loops before hooking his fingers in and pulling closer, pushing their hips together, and they both gasp as their erections align.
They have no idea what they are doing, but they have enough presence of mind to quickly shove their pants down to their thighs. Everything that comes after is a blur for Tobio; they barely stop kissing (‘Is it still called kissing if it’s more like another one of our fights?’ Tobio wonders later on), and their hands are clumsily holding their dicks together, trying to pump such that they won’t get into each other’s way. It’s messy as all fuck, but they don’t need much. A few more moments, and Tobio twists his lips away with another gasp before coming. He lets out a loud groan, and he attempts to silence himself by latching his mouth onto the nearest thing. It turns out to be Hinata’s jaw, and he mindlessly allows himself to caress it with lips and tongue.
When Hinata comes, it is much quieter. His breath hitches at the touch to his jaw, and it is enough to set him off. He scrabbles for purchase on Tobio’s shoulders, and a small whine makes its way past his lips. He desperately thrusts his hips once, twice, before sagging against the wall behind him with a sigh.
They are silent except for their panting, too busy trying to catch their breaths. And then the bell rings, signaling the end of their lunch break, and they scramble to clean up and get their clothes back in order. They hurry back to their respective classrooms, and the only indication that anything out of the usual happened is the leftover flush on their faces.
Much like before, they don’t talk about it. But now, by unspoken agreement, they sometimes seek each other out. It's often to make out or mutually jack off. Sometimes, however, they hang out in silence, simply holding on and listening to each other’s slow breaths.
They're forced to talk to each other, however, when one day Nishinoya and Tanaka approach Tobio after practice with matching wide grins.
“Kageyama-kun,” they call out in singsong.
“Why didn’t you tell us, huh?” Tanaka asks with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows. “No wonder you’ve been so different lately! We thought you were just opening up to us some more, but it looks like it was something else instead!”
“Or someone, rather,” Nishinoya pipes up, nudging Tobio’s side. “Tell us, Kageyama, who is this mysterious girl that you’ve been hiding from your wonderful senpai?”
“W-What?” Tobio is backed into his locker, and he looks at the two in both panic and confusion. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“There’s no need to hold back, Kageyama-kun! We’ve figured it all out anyway!” Tanaka says with a bruising pat on his shoulder. And then, with the same hand, he pokes at Tobio’s neck. Tobio flinches, both surprised and a little pained. “I mean, where else would you have gotten such a massive hickey?” Tanaka continues with a boisterous laugh.
Tobio’s eyes widen in horror, and he instinctively looks at Hinata, who in turn looks just as shocked as he is. Tobio turns back to the two upperclassmen crowding him, and he sputters pitifully until Ennoshita finally comes and drags them away with a resigned sigh.
He and Hinata are quiet on their way home, and while most of the team give them worried looks (or a worried furrow of brows coupled with a suspicious stare, in Tsukishima’s case), Ennoshita only looks at them knowingly. It is when they're finally alone that they speak up.
“I’m sorry,” Hinata says quietly, not looking at Tobio. “I guess I got too carried away earlier. I wasn’t thinking.”
Tobio huffs in irritation. “I wasn’t thinking either, dumbass. If I was, I probably would have stopped you,” he says.
Hinata hums, and they are quiet again. He stops abruptly, however, and Tobio looks back, an eyebrow raised in question. Hinata takes a deep breath before looking up and meeting his eyes, face set with determination. “We should– We should talk about this. Like, seriously talk.” He says.
Tobio frowns, but he nods nonetheless. “Alright,” he says.
Hinata nods as well, more to himself than to Tobio. “Okay,” he mumbles. “I-I’ll be perfectly honest, Kageyama. I don’t... I don’t think I like you. Not like that. I’ve been thinking about it, you know, and I just... I guess I was mostly curious? A-And you’re the person I’m closest to, besides Kenma, probably, so...” He trails off, fingers twiddling nervously. “N-Not that you’re unlikable! You’re attractive, I guess, objectively speaking, but just, you know...”
Tobio’s brows wrinkle in thought. He’d never really examined his motivations behind what they were doing, accepting it as it was and just going along with the flow. Now that he’s forced to think about it, however...
“I don’t... think I like you either,” he says slowly, as if tasting the words on his tongue. And, well, figuratively speaking, he supposes it does taste right. “I was mostly carried away, maybe? I didn’t really think about it, not in the way you did.” He cocks his head and looks at Hinata curiously. “Do you want to stop?” He asks.
“Hmmm, not really?” Hinata replies, though it is more a question than a statement. “I mean, yeah, we’re not interested in getting into a relationship, but– Oh!” His eyes brighten, and if they were in a cartoon, Tobio figures a light bulb would have gone off above his head. “How ‘bout this? We continue as we are, though maybe we should be a little more careful about leaving marks. And if we end up liking someone else, or get into a relationship or whatever, we stop. And like... If one of us ends up liking the other... Well, I guess we’ll have to talk about it if it happens. How’s that sound?”
Tobio rolls the thought around in his head for a few moments. It sounds like it has the potential to backfire on them, but... Like Hinata said, they could just talk about it if it ever happened. He nods then, and resumes walking. “Sounds good to me.”
They continue that way for the rest of their second year, and about halfway through their third. They only stop when Hinata admits to having someone he likes, as well as his plans to ask them out. Tobio agrees easily; he had never grown to have any sort of feelings for Hinata, and by now he knows his body well enough to not need someone to experiment with. He’ll probably miss having a sexual partner, even if they’d never gone farther than oral sex and a few fingers, but he’ll live. And if he were to be honest with himself (which he isn’t), he knows, in the back of his mind, who he actually would not mind having both a romantic and sexual relationship with, but he keeps the though buried deep, deep down, just as he has for the past few years.
He isn’t particularly surprised when Hinata tells him some months after they break things off that he’s entered a relationship with Kenma, even if Nekoma’s former setter is busier than ever with college. Tobio had never actively considered it, but he supposes that it was rather obvious in hindsight. He congratulates Hinata for his success at confessing to Kenma, and if he’s a little jealous, well, he’s the only one to know.
(This is yet another lie he tells himself, and he ignores the way Kenma looks at him knowingly sometimes.)
Hinata stays a constant in his life, even if they drift apart a little, if only because they don’t spend as much time together anymore after breaking up. They become roommates when they enter college, both scouted by the same university in Tokyo. Tobio knows Hinata would very much love to live with Kenma, whose own apartment and university are not too far from their own, but as first years, they are required to live in the dorms.
Having Hinata with him is a big help, and not just in curbing homesickness. Tobio finds out upon attending one of his lectures that Kunimi shares the same class, and where Kunimi is, Kindaichi follows. This is proven true when Hinata and Tobio arrive at volleyball tryouts to the two of them starting their warm up stretches. Tobio stops in his tracks, frozen in fear, but Hinata gives him a hard shove that forces him to move. He sends over as harsh a glare as he can muster, but they both know it isn’t much.
Hinata places himself between Tobio and the other two, and Tobio ignores them as much as he possibly can. It’s a little easier than he thought it would be, as he is at volleyball tryouts, but it’s not quite easy either, especially when the coach tells him to show his tosses by setting to Kindaichi. He has half a mind to refuse, and he very nearly does when Kindaichi gives a look loaded with suspicion. Tobio deserved that four years ago, but he thought they’d realized that he had changed, after the last three years. They obviously haven’t, if Kindaichi’s reaction to him is any indication.
Tobio forces himself to think of Kindaichi as just another volleyball player, to analyze the kind of toss he’d need so he can deliver the perfect set. He forces himself to ignore Kunimi’s deceptively passive gaze, to focus instead on the task the coach had given him. He will not allow their presence to take volleyball away from him again.
He somehow manages to survive tryouts without running off into the hills. When he and Hinata return to their dorm, he is so exhausted, both emotionally and physically, and all he wants to do is collapse onto his bed. Hinata doesn’t let him, however, literally pushing him into the shower instead.
“I’ll wash you myself, if I have to,” Hinata says at the door. This is enough to prompt Tobio to move, and he comes out a few minutes later refreshed, though no less tired. He heads straight to his bed, where he throws himself with no care as to what might fall off. He hears Hinata making his way to the bathroom as he is drifting off.
He dimly registers the sound of the water shutting off, and by the time Hinata comes back into the room, Tobio is already half asleep. He isn’t too out of it, however, to not feel when Hinata pushes him further into the bed and climbs in beside him.
“What’re you doin’?” He asks, voice slurred.
Hinata shushes him gently, a hand reaching up to push black bangs from his forehead. “Just go to sleep for now. Let’s deal with everything tomorrow morning, okay? Just rest, Kageyama. I’ll be here.”
Tobio makes a wounded noise, a kind of whimpering sound that he will deny making if anyone asks, and curls around Hinata’s smaller frame. He closes his eyes once more and lets himself succumb to the call of slumber.
When he wakes the next morning, his head is throbbing, and he absently thanks whatever deity is out there that his classes are all in the afternoon as he gingerly makes his way off the bed. He looks around the room, but Hinata is nowhere to be seen. There’s a note on his table, though, telling him that Hinata had just stepped out to buy them breakfast.
Tobio doesn’t wait long before the door opens, and Hinata steps in, a plastic bag from the nearby convenience store in one hand. “Oh, you’re up!” Hinata greets with a bright smile upon seeing him. “Have you been awake long? I tried to be quick, but some drunk guy was making a scene. Who even drinks that much so early in the morning?!”
Tobio merely grunts in reply and takes the bag from Hinata. He stays silent as they eat, even as Hinata regales him with stories from his first day. Soon enough, however, Hinata stops talking, looking at Tobio instead with an unusually somber expression.
“Kageyama,” he starts cautiously, and Tobio braces himself for the conversation to come, shoulders curling in defensively towards his chest. “I wasn’t entirely sure how to talk to you today, so I called Kenma, and he... may have mentioned some things he’s observed about you.”
Tobio’s blood freezes in his veins, and he turns away to hide his face. Hinata’s eyes narrow upon seeing it, but he carries on.
“Kage– Tobio.” His voice grows firm, unyielding, and Tobio knows there is no running away from it anymore. “Tobio, how long have you been in love with both Kunimi and Kindaichi?”
Tobio doesn’t answer, and he fancies he can hear their clock ticking. And then, so sudden he surprises even himself, he crumples on his bed, heaving sobs break past his lips. Hinata immediately jumps to his side, babbling apologies. Tobio would wave it off if he could; Hinata didn’t do anything wrong. He’d only verbalized what Tobio had avoided telling himself the last few years. He’d thought that by not acknowledging his feelings, they would eventually go away. Now he knows that all he’d done was put a stopper on something that would just end up overflowing anyway. All it had taken was a little push from Hinata, and they had immediately bubbled over and taken over him.
“I’m sorry,” Hinata says, voice low. One hand is wrapped around Tobio, while the other cards through Tobio’s hair. “I shouldn’t have just sprung that on you.”
Tobio shakes his head, brushing against Hinata’s chest. “Not your fault,” he says through hiccups. “I shouldn’t have avoided it for so long.”
“Still...” Hinata sighs, then crushes Tobio to his chest. “What will we do with you, Tobio?”
“They hate me,” Tobio forces himself to say, the words muffled by Hinata’s shirt. “I thought they saw how much I changed, back in first year, but they still hate me, Hinata. They still think of me as the King of the Court that they dubbed me as. I don’t think they’ll ever see me as anything else.”
“We’ll show them, then,” Hinata says, voice steely with determination. “They can’t completely avoid you at practice, not unless they quit the team, and at this point I don’t think they will. Let’s show them how much you’ve changed, if they didn’t want to believe it before.”
Tobio nods, but he’s sure it will never work. He doubts they’ll recognize that he’s not how he used to be. If they didn’t even after seeing him on the other side of the court for three years, who’s to say they would now?
Tobio is determined to ignore them outside of practice, but fate has other plans. He and Kunimi are assigned to work with each other for a semester-long project in the one class they share. Kindaichi transfers to another class of his, frowning as he catches sight of Tobio. He also sees them everywhere on campus, and it’s starting to drive him crazy.
He and Kunimi stare each other down the first time their professor uses the period to talk about the mechanics and tells the class to sit according to their pairs. They sit together, but they arrange themselves such that one can just barely tell that they’re supposed to be partners. They only talk when their professor gives them time to brainstorm about what they’ll do, and even then their words are short and clipped. Or at least Kunimi’s are short and clipped, carrying a hint of sarcasm. Tobio is awkward, not entirely sure what he can say that won’t upset his partner, and everything he says comes out a little gruff. He can tell that Kunimi would much rather be partnered with anyone else. The only highlight of the session is that they eventually decide on a topic that Tobio is actually rather interested in, as well as the fact that they somehow manage to agree on meeting up outside of class.
Class with Kindaichi is... uncomfortable, to say the least. He sits directly behind Tobio, being the only unclaimed seat that isn’t too far back, and Tobio can feel it whenever Kindaichi glares holes at his back. It's distracting, and sometimes Tobio leaves the class with notes that are barely legible.
Practice is a little more tolerable, though not always. Tobio usually practices with the upperclassmen, and he likes the challenge. Volleyball at university level is much more difficult than he’d expected, but he and Hinata are able to keep up. Sometimes, however, he is told to practice with the second-string players, where Kindaichi and Kunimi are. He's able to set perfectly well to most of the spikers, but setting to the two is always a test of its own.
He finds it hard to read them, and he keeps hesitating. They also hesitate, in turn. Kindaichi hits the ball later than he is supposed to, whenever Tobio’s toss is perfect for him, as if he's surprised that the ball is there at all, or he fumbles too much when the toss is too short. Kunimi, whose play style is already energy-efficient on its own, tends to miss entirely. This frustrates Tobio, because he’s trying, he really is. He doesn’t yell at them when they miss, apologizing instead for sloppy sets. Kindaichi always glares and snaps at him, while Kunimi frowns but doesn’t say a word or meet his eyes.
(Kunimi Akira has always been an enigma to Tobio. Kindaichi is similar to Hinata, generally wearing his heart on his sleeve, but Kunimi is much harder to read. His expressions are often neutral, his voice naturally deadpan, and he exudes an air of indifference. The few times Tobio has seen him get emotional are during matches, and even then he has to get truly invested first before he lets his guard down.)
Things come to a head one day when Tobio finally snaps and yells at Kindaichi for missing a toss, and the look on Kindaichi’s face as Tobio talks can only be described as smug. He goads Tobio, saying that he’s known all along that Tobio hasn’t changed at all, that he’s still the egocentric prick he’s always been, and Tobio shakes in anger and shame. Hinata latches on to his arm, face panicked and eyes darting to the side where the coaches are. Kunimi approaches Kindaichi and tries to pull him back, but he also gives Tobio a wary look. Tobio is about to speak again to try and defend himself when their captain approaches, his face dark with anger.
He benches Tobio, Kindaichi, and Kunimi for the next two weeks; he and the coaches have noticed their rocky relationship from the start, and though Kunimi didn’t actually join the fight, their past behavior coupled with today’s incident shows that they need to fix things before they start affecting the team even more. Hinata isn't benched, but he is told to watch them and ensure they don’t continue fighting.
Tobio tunes everything out as soon as he's told he is benched. He feels as if he's underwater, the sounds and sights all blurred together. He’s just... tired. He’s tired of trying to please the two, tired of trying to enjoy volleyball while presented with an obstacle that is both the object of his affections and the source of his hurts. He is tired of being angry at the world, at himself... He is just so tired of everything.
He leaves the gym wordlessly as soon as they are dismissed, and Hinata runs after him with a worried shout of his name. Behind them, Kindaichi still tries to argue, but Kunimi gets him to leave with a few hushed words. Tobio hears them walking behind him, and he walks faster, not wanting to face them anymore.
Akira doesn’t know how to feel anymore. He mutely follows after Yuutarou, who seems to be trying to go after Kageyama, who in turn seems to be doing all he can to get away from them. Akira thinks he should be satisfied about finally making Kageyama act like the king they’d always called him, but instead he just feels... hollow.
He'd seen the look in Kageyama’s eyes when they were told they were benched, and it had been empty. It had struck him, because even when Kageyama was angry, his eyes had always shone with passion. That look he’d seen, however, had made it seem like Kageyama had been stripped of everything he was. It reminds him of that time in middle school, when Kageyama had stopped going to practice but Akira would still him in the halls. His eyes had been empty then, just like it is now, except this time...
“Yuutarou!”
Akira runs after Yuutarou and grabs him by the arm. When Yuutarou looks back, his face is twisted in confused anger. “Why are stopping me?” He growls and turns to Kageyama, whose back is rapidly moving farther away. “We just got benched because of that guy!”
Akira scowls and tugs hard on the arm in his hand. “Yuutarou, stop.” He stops, and Akira feels it’s safe to let go. He reaches up with a sigh and turns Yuutarou’s face to him. “I think... I think we were in the wrong, this time.” He says.
Yuutarou tries to recoil in shock, but Akira’s hold stays fast. “What the fuck, Akira?!”
“Listen to me, Yuutarou,” Akira says. “Kageyama... Kageyama’s changed. I know we were both trying to deny it, even when we saw it in front of our own eyes back in high school. Remember that first practice match we had with Karasuno? We knew it then, but we didn’t really want to see it. We... we were assholes, Yuutarou.”
Yuutarou is looking at him with wide eyes now. This is something they’ve been dancing around for ages, and they’d gotten so used to not thinking about it that to hear it now is like having their world turned upside down. Akira licks his dry lips and presses on.
“I know it’ll be hard, but... I think we should give Kageyama a chance. We need to talk to him. We need to fix this, somehow.” His hands move down to Yuutarou’s chest, his fingers curling a little into Yuutarou’s shirt. “We were good, once, the three of us,” Akira says softly. “We were all very different from each other, but we fit well together, balanced each other out. I think... I think we can be that again, if we let Kageyama in.”
Yuutarou bites his lip and looks down on the ground. He doesn’t reply for a while, but Akira doesn’t push him. He knows that Yuutarou needs the time to really think about it.
“I’ve been a dick,” Yuutarou finally says after a few moments. Akira nods, though Yuutarou doesn’t see him. “But... he’s been a dick, too!”
Akira narrows his eyes at him. “But he hasn’t. We both know he hasn’t, that he hasn’t for a long time now, but we’ve been ignoring it because to acknowledge it meant having to apologize and admit we were wrong. It’s been years, Yuutarou. We were all just children, even if we felt so big at the time. And besides,” he sighs, “aren’t you tired of being angry? I know you’re still mad about the things he said and did before, but it’s time to let go.”
Yuutarou keeps his face turned away, obviously still reluctant, but in the end, he nods slowly. “Okay,” he says, though grudgingly. “Fine, yeah, I’ll forgive him.”
“Does that mean you’ll finally apologize to Tobio?”
The voice makes them both jump in surprise, and they turn to see Hinata standing not too far away, arms crossed and face inscrutable. Akira frowns, not having noticed his presence, but nods nonetheless. “We will,” he confirms.
Hinata is silent for a few beats, and then he visibly relaxes, and his face softens. “Oh, thank God,” he breathes. “Thank you. He’s been destroying himself the past two weeks, and I didn’t know what to do anymore.”
Akira clenches his fists, and crosses his arms to hide it. “We’ll fix this,” he says.
It's a promise.
The problem is: Kageyama seems to be ignoring them. It’s not much of a surprise, but Akira had hoped it wouldn’t be so. Kageyama doesn’t go to their shared classes, doesn’t go to his pre-arranged meetings for the project. Hinata’s face is strained and tired whenever they see him around, but he never has the time to talk to them.
Akira worries. The look he’d seen on Kageyama’s face is etched in his mind, and while he can’t quite say that it gives him a foreboding feeling, it isn’t a very positive one, either. He sees that Yuutarou is starting to become concerned about him, but he doesn’t know how to give reassurance when he can’t even reassure himself.
They finally get to approach Hinata when he leaves practice alone one day, and with only one glance at them, he motions for them to follow him.
“Tobio hasn’t been leaving his room,” Hinata says softly after a few moments of silence. “I wanted to ask you guys to come over, but I’ve been so busy, and I didn’t want to leave you guys alone in case he lashes out, or something.” He shrugs. “To be honest, at this point I’d rather he does that than continue lying on his bed doing nothing. I guess I should be happy he still eats, but even then, it isn’t much, and I just…” He trails off then, and Akira feels his stomach clench with worry.
He can’t say he understands why, when they’ve been nothing but shit to him, but his and Yuutarou’s opinions matter that much to Kageyama, and their repeated (stubborn) rejection of him must have… devastated him, somehow. Akira has an idea, of course, a small inkling as to why they’re so important to Kageyama, but he doesn’t want to explore that thought when they’d done him so much wrong.
A warm hand grabs onto his own cold one, and he looks up to meet Yuutarou’s eyes. “It’ll be okay,” Yuutarou says with a gentle squeeze. Akira nods and walks a little closer, seeking comfort in his presence.
When they reach Hinata and Kageyama’s room, Hinata tells them to keep quiet and wait outside. “I’ll talk to him first,” he says. “He might react too strongly if he sees you immediately.”
Akira and Yuutarou nod, their hands laced tightly together, and Hinata enters without another word.
Tobio doesn’t know how long it’s been since he locked himself in his room. All he knows is that everything hurt while he was outside, and keeping himself hidden away kept all that hurt at bay. The time passes in a blur of nightmares about his time in middle school and that last argument. Sometimes he thinks he eats, but that isn’t something he’s entirely sure of.
He hears Hinata enter, hears the soft call of his name, but he buries himself deeper into his blankets in reply. The mattress dips beside him, and he tenses as a hand makes its way into his cocoon to seek his own.
“Please,” Hinata says, and Tobio’s heart clenches at how tight and watery his voice sounds. “Come out, Tobio. It’s been days. You haven’t been to class, you barely eat… I’m really worried about you.”
Something thick lodges in Tobio’s throat, but he ignores it, just as he ignores Hinata’s words. Hinata is silent for a moment, and when he speaks again, his voice is harder.
“I wanted to give you time. I thought maybe you’d get up and go out on your own, but I guess not.” Hinata lets go, and the extra weight lifts off the bed. “I hope you don’t get too mad.” Hinata says, and Tobio frowns when he realizes that Hinata’s voice is farther away now. “I just didn’t know what to do anymore.”
Tobio hears the door open again, hears Hinata tell someone to come in, and he freezes. ‘No no no no no,’ his mind screams. He knows just what Hinata has done, knows who he brought with him.
“Kageyama.”
He closes his eyes and feels as if his world is crashing down around him.
Yuutarou hears someone wheezing, hears Hinata’s panicked shout of Kageyama’s name, but he can barely bring himself to believe it. He had agreed to apologize mostly because Akira had been so insistent on it, and seeing Hinata hurry to Kageyama out of the pile of blankets on one of the beds, seeing how Kageyama’s eyes are red-rimmed, blown, and unseeing, drives home the fact that he had fucked up, and that he had been fucking up for a few years now.
He looks at Akita beside him, who seems to be just as shocked at the sight of Kageyama, and looks down again. He knows Akira had just started calling Kageyama the “King of the Court” because of how he’d yelled so much at Yuutarou, had suggested they stop spiking Kageyama’s tosses for the same reasons, and that Akira did not actually have as strong a grudge aginst Kageyama the way Yuutarou did. Akira had mainly been disappointed at the kind of person Kageyama had become, had been shielding Yuutarou as much as he could from Kageyama’s harsh criticism. He hadn’t cared about the words Kageyama had thrown at him at all. Yuutarou had been hiding behind that shield since then, even (or perhaps especially) when faced with a changed Kageyama.
He’d fucked up, big time. And as he looks back up at Kageyama, who is starting to calm down, he squeezes Akira’s hand and silently thanks him while vowing to fix his mistakes.
Tobio closes his eyes and tries to control his breathing. Hinata is rubbing his back comfortingly, and he leans slightly into it. However, most of his attention is focused on the other two people in the room. He cannot see them, refuses to look at them at all, but he can feel how uneasy they are all the way from where he is sitting. He hears a shuffling, and he freezes. Someone takes a deep breath and speaks.
“Kageyama,” they say, and Tobio recognizes the voice as Kindaichi’s. “You probably don’t want to talk to us, but it’s fine. I understand. Well, it’s not fine, but… we’ll just talk to you instead.” His voice is wobbling, and he takes another breath, though Tobio can’t fathom why Kindaichi would have to feel nervous. “We— Akira and I— would like to apologize. We were unreasonable when it came to you. You didn’t deserve what happened in middle school— though you were still an ass, don’t get me wrong— Ow!” Kindaichi cuts himself off with a yelp. Tobio suspects Kunimi must have elbowed him. “A-Anyway, we just… We’re sorry. And we’d like to make it up to you, somehow.”
Tobio stays quiet, still refusing to look at anyone, even as he feels their gazes on him. He tries to think through his sluggish mind. Something about what Kindaichi had said seemed so… wrong. Something…
“But… I haven’t really changed.” When his voice comes out, it is rough from days without speaking. Hinata’s arms tense around him, but he doesn’t say a word. A choked sound comes from the other two.
“What do you mean you haven’t changed?” Kunimi asks slowly.
“I did it again,” Tobio says. “I yelled at Kindaichi again, just like I did before.” He can hear Hinata giving a low whine, as if he were stopping himself from talking.
“Th-That was my fault!” Kindaichi says with a gasp. “I was purposefully playing badly because I… I didn’t think playing well mattered if you were my setter…” He trails off when Tobio just curls in on himself more.
“Which is why we’re here,” Kunimi interjects. “We know, now, that we were treating you horribly. We kept thinking of you as the same person you were in middle school, even while you were showing us you weren’t. We were stubborn, and we ended up hurting you. I don’t know how to prove to you how sorry we are.”
There’s a rustling sound again, and nobody speaks. When the silence last for a few more moments, Tobio finally chances a peek, and he is stunned. Kunimi and Kindaichi are both bent over in a deep bow, their hands trembling slightly at their sides. Tobio tries to speak, his mouth opening uselessly, but he is rendered speechless. Hinata moves Tobio to look at him.
“Give them a chance,” he says. “I overheard them talking about you, and I know they’re serious. They really want to fix things with you. And you want it too, don’t you, Tobio?”
Tobio looks back at the two, who still haven’t risen from their position. He nods slowly, and when he realizes they can’t see him, he clears his throat in embarrassment. “Okay,” he manages to croak out. His eyes are starting to water, but he ignores it. “I… I forgive you.”
Kindaichi straightens first, his eyes wide and bright. “You… really?” He asks breathlessly. Beside him, Kunimi rises slowly, though his face is no less surprised. Tobio nods again, not trusting himself to speak. An ‘oh’ comes from Kunimi’s lips, soft and wondering.
Beside Tobio, Hinata smiles, and a hand reaches down to squeeze Tobio’s arm. Overwhelmed, he covers himself in the blanket once more, and releases a few tears while no one can see him. The other three in the room exclaim in surprise, but he simply gives a wet laugh.
“I’m fine,” he says, and for the first time in a while, he truly believes it.