Work Text:
“Don’t stare at me like that!”
Kageyama blinked, taking a step back as he realized that Hinata had somehow closed the gap in between them on the court faster than he had really been able to react. Wait, had he… had he spaced out again? He bit his lower lip, brows furrowing as he tried to process exactly what had just gone on. At one point, he’d been thinking about….
Oh, no. That was distracting him again. He couldn’t keep being distracted by this, not with the modified quick strike needing more work for the accuracy rate to go up. He couldn’t keep…
“Hey!! Pay attention to me when I’m talking to you!” Hinata shouted again, and across the court, Daichi’s voice rang out as he began to speak
“You two, stop fighting, we need to---“
“Hinata, get outta my face!”
Kageyama shoved him back, and Hinata stumbled, eyes wide as he caught himself just before he fell back onto his butt on the court. Setting his jaw in frustration, he took the step to press his front up against Kageyama’s and demand to know exactly what that shove had been about when a ball came whizzing their way.
They both barely managed to duck, Kageyama dropping into a crouch with a gasp and Hinata leaning away from the ball.
“Wh---“ Kageyama began indignantly,
“Don’t talk over Daichi, idiots! And stop yelling on the court!” Tanaka scolded them both with an angry and accusatory point of his finger. Kageyama glared back at him, unsure of exactly what to say considering that he had just interrupted Daichi and he definitely had been yelling on the court. The gym fell into an awkward silence as Hinata’s lower lip slipped into an angry pout – he’d just wanted to know why he’d been stared at, after all. Before it could drag on for too long…
“Aren’t you yelling on the court too, Tanaka?” Tsukishima asked slyly from where he stood by the water cooler, and the sound of Sugawara’s giggles as he tried to smother them in his practice penny was enough to break the tension, with the question of Kageyama’s inattention long forgotten.
---
“Ouch!”
Kageyama glanced up from his sneakers, where he’d changed out of his court shoes, to set his gaze on Hinata, who had just snapped him with a towel. Frowning at him, Kageyama massaged the spot on his arm and asked,
“What was that for, idiot?”
Hinata stomped his right foot and stretched the towel out between his two hands, pulling it taught and twitching as if he might hit Kageyama again with it. If he did… Kageyama would find something to hit him with. His court shoes, if he really needed to.
“You did it again!” Hinata declared, and Kageyama stared blankly back at up him from where he sat on the bench outside of the gymnasium.
“Did what?”
“Stared! You keep staring at me, like, my face! Constantly!”
“Do not.”
“Do too!”
“I don’t want to look at you any longer than I need to.”
“H-hey!”
Hinata’s eyes were wide and wounded, and Kageyama felt bad for the remark for a few minutes until he remembered the sharp sting of the towel against his arm. Snatching up his duffel from the ground, Kageyama stood and used his height to tower over Hinata just a little bit, glaring down at him past the bridge of his nose because he absolutely enjoyed lording his advantage in height over the redhead, at least just a little bit. That, and he was not liking being called out on the fact that he was staring at Hinata, because he knew exactly why, and he didn’t want anyone else to know.
No one could know.
---
It was getting worse, because even Kageyama realized what he was doing and when it was happening now. With an angry turn on his heel, he made his way towards the water cooler and filled the plastic bottle he’d been using at practice. He held it up to his forehead and frowned in the general direction of the court, where Hinata stood, but his attention wasn’t there for long as Tsukishima stepped beside him with a noisy swig of his own water.
“You practicing shooting lasers out of your eyes or something?” Tsuki asked as he pulled his glasses off and began to rub the lenses, cleaning them methodically and acting as if he hadn’t just asked Kageyama a ridiculous question – which Kageyama called him out on immediately.
“Ridiculous.” He snapped back, and Tsukishima smirked at him.
“What’s ridiculous is you staring at Hinata like he’s some mysterious puzzle, and acting like you’re not the entire time, y’know?” He commented with a dry chuckle, and Kageyama bristled beside him.
“It’s not that, it’s becau—“
“Because you idolize H—“
“Shit, no, it’s because I, er---“
“Because you’re wondering exactly w—“
Kageyama threw his hands up with an exasperated noise and yelled, much louder than he intended,
“IT’S HIS HAIR!”
The squeaking of shoes across the court and the other sounds of movement that echoed through the gym came to a screeching halt. Tsukishima began to laugh beside him, and Kageyama could feel his face heating up with so much intensity that it almost felt as if he’d been sunburned in thirty seconds flat. Oh, god, this was worse than… This was worse than… This might be the worst embarrassment he could think of, especially as Tanaka burst into raucous laughter a couple feet away from the first-year pair.
“This entire thing has been about… Hinata’s… hair?” Asahi’s confused, concerned voice echoed through the gym, the only other sound besides Kageyama’s increasingly heavy breathing and Tsukishima and Tanaka’s combined laughter.
“It’s not real.” Kageyama muttered beneath his breath, and Tsukishima stopped beside him for a few brief moments before the sniggering sound started all over again.
“My hair is too real!” Hinata shouted, somehow able to hear that – what, was he hiding like, a super-sonic radar thing under his hair?
Kageyama chuckled the almost completely full bottle of water towards him and clenched his fists at his sides.
“I just remembered I have a quiz to make up!” He declared, and before couch Ukai could say a word, he slammed the door of the gym open and left. It closed behind him with heavy finality, and with an anxious twiddle of his thumbs, Yamaguchi asked unsurely,
“Since when does Kageyama actually make up the quizzes that he misses?”
---
Kageyama leaned against the door later that day, and was rewarded with the sound of silence on the other side. They must have all gone home for the day; practice ended a while ago, and it was late enough that even the ones who typically stayed after to work on things should’ve already gone home. With a long, exasperated sigh, Kageyama pushed open the door (thanking whatever volleyball god was watching over him that the janitor hadn’t come through yet) and moved towards the bench, where he’d tossed his gear before practice (and subsequently where he had left it when he ‘went to make up a quiz’, time which he actually spent hiding in the boys’ bathroom and wondering why Hinata Shouyou had made his life come to this).
He’d barely stepped into the gym when something grabbed the back of his shirt. Kageyama yelped and turned around, the motion-activated lights flickering on, ready to raise his hand and punch whoever it was when he realized exactly who was standing there.
“Hinata!” He growled, and Hinata drew his eyebrows together in frustration.
“Don’t you say that to me like that! My hair is real!”
... Had Hinata stayed in the gym after practice just to tell him that?
“Touch it! It’ll prove it!”
Kageyama blanched at this heated declaration, and then started to shake his head. He stopped almost as soon as he’d started, however, because he was unsure of exactly what to do. On one hand, well… touching Hinata’s hair was what had gotten him into this mess. He’d ruffled it once and then it had all gone downhill from there. How was hair like this so soft? If his hair was this crazy, how was it possible so soft? His own hair was kinda soft, that he knew, but his hair was also smooth and… tame. Hinata’s hair was neither of those things, and it was still pretty soft. He didn’t really want to further the issue here by touching his hair again.
On the other hand… Touching Hinata’s hair might give him some closure. He needed closure. Maybe he could stop staring at his hair if he had closure… Right? Man. This wasn’t like memorizing the signals for a play on the court. Kageyama just had to make a decision, and so…
“Fine.”
Reaching out with his right hand, he placed it on Hinata’s head and threaded his fingers into the red locks there. He carded them through, pulling on the hair (still stupidly soft) and giving it a few tugs. Yeah, it was attached to the scalp. Definitely real. Kageyama was ready to sigh, admit defeat, and pull his hand away when he realized that…
Hinata was making quiet, soft little noises as Kageyama pulled on his hair. The spiker’s eyes had fallen partially shut, his lips barely parted, his breathing soft as little noises of content fell from them. What was he doing? Oh god, what was he, what was he, Kageyama needed to stop ---
He didn’t. He kept pulling gently, listening to the tiny sounds that Hinata was making, and he wondered exactly what might happen if he did this or that. He gave an experimental, not-quite-yank-but-almost, and Hinata straight up groaned.
That was enough to make him yank his hand back. Hinata’s eyes opened on a delay, bleary and almost sleepy looking as they refocused.
“Hnn… so, real, right?” Hinata asked after a few moments, and then it was his turn to stare up at the other male.
“Kageyama, why are you so red?” He questioned him curiously, because Kageyama resembled a tomato right now. All he’d been doing was touching his hair; why did he look so upset and embarrassed? What was wrong? He didn’t get the chance to ask, because Kageyama mumbled something that Hinata didn’t catch and then turned to leave.
---
The next practice, Kageyama stared at Hinata for an entirely different reason.
He couldn’t get that image of the other male out of his head. It wouldn’t leave him. All he could see was Hinata, gently flushed and breathing contentedly, with teasing hums and fluttering eyelashes. He didn’t see Hinata that way, he told himself, so why was he so focused on that?
He managed to scrape his way through practice this time, but his hope for a quick escape was dashed by a silent, but intimidating presence beside him.
“Kageyama?” Asashi’s unassuming question was still enough to make Kageyama dread the question. He decided not to respond, instead sneaking a look at his upperclassman out of the corner of his eye. Asahi was twiddling his thumbs where he stood.
“Get on with it!” Nishinoya remarked playfully, giving Asahi a supportive nudge as he walked past. Asahi cleared his throat and fidgeted, adjusting his weight a few times before speaking up again.
“… If you like Hinata, you should just tell him.” His voice was barely more than a whisper, but Kageyama still heard it, and he still reacted rather aggressively to it, taking a huge step back and spluttering out nonsense which was, in no means, an understandable response to the statement.
“I, er, I---“
“J-just think about it? It’ll help, okay, I promise!” Asahi added on desperately. He looked as if he might continue on to say something, but he was interrupted by a call from across the gym, where Nishinoya lingered at the door, calling for him. Asahi glanced towards him and swallowed audibly before his attention shifted briefly back to Kageyama.
“I would know.” He murmured, and with flushed face and a tentative thumbs-up, Asahi speed walked away and left Kageyama with a confused, newly-enlightened view of his upperclassmen and an even more muddled perspective on his whole… Hinata problem.
---
“If you like it that much, take a picture!”
“Shut up, Hinata!”
“Stop staring, Kageyama!”
“I’M GONNA PUT MY FOOT UP BOTH OF YOUR ASSES!”
“Gross, Tanaka!” echoed simultaneously with, “Shut up, Tanaka!” At least Hinata and Kageyama were on similar pages in that regards.
---
“If they don’t start practicing well again together, all the work they’ve put in is gonna go to shit!” Nishinoya groaned, plopping his head on Asahi’s shoulder as they sat at lunch together. Asahi let out a long sigh that spoke heaps about his worry for the first-year pair, and Nishinoya poked him in the thigh for it.
“Stop makin’ such worried sounds.” He scolded the tall ace, and Asahi bit his lower lip.
“I can’t help it. I just feel like they need a little push or something, but….” He tensed as Nishinoya sat up beside him and grinned so broadly that Asahi thought it might split his face.
“A push, you say?” He asked slowly, and Asahi’s mouth fell open.
“D-don’t you do a thing, Noya!”
Nishinoya’s expression smile grew even more and he gave Asahi a playful shove.
“Sure.” He agreed flippantly, deciding that he would apologize for the crossed fingers behind his back later. After all, wasn’t it easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission?
---
“I didn’t mean a literal push! And you said---“
“I crossed my fingers.”
“Nishinoya!”
Nishinoya laughed, breathless after he had just sprinted madly away from the scene of the crime. Hinata and Kageyama had been staying after practice like they almost always did, and Nishinoya had convinced Asahi to stick around with him for a while. Just a little while, until he got his chance when Kageyama and Hinata had started a little argument.
He sprinted past the pair, unceremoniously gave Kageyama a very hard shove into Hinata (using his (rather awesome skills as a libero, in his opinion, to do so) while hooking his foot behind Hinata’s so that he couldn’t catch himself. Hinata might end up with a bruised ass from the fall, but either way, it was the cliché, typical, ‘I’m lying on top of my crush’ situation, and Nishinoya was rather proud of himself as he snatched up Asahi’s hand.
“We better leave.” His voice was full of mirth and mischief, and he stood up on his tip-toes to press a chaste kiss to Asahi’s cheek before he pulled him through the doorway and out of the gymnasium.
Behind them, they left two incredibly, incredibly confused boys.
“I-er, Nishinoya—“ Kageyama’s sentences had left him, leaving him with fragments of words that refused to connect and make sense. He ran his tongue over his lower lip as he found himself face-to-face this closely with Hinata once again, for the first time since the whole hair situation. He wanted to touch his hair again, wanted to.
“I… Nishinoya told me…” Hinata started, eyes wide, and then in typical Hinata fashion, he launched straight into the rest of his explanation.
“NishinoyatoldmetosaysomethingtoyoubutIdidn’tsoIthinkthisishiswayoftellingusto—“
“Telling us to what?” Kageyama snapped, prickly in his utter lack of control over the situation, and deciding to throw caution to the wind (he didn’t burst in demanding to be an ace on his first day of high school for lack of confidence, after all), Hinata craned his neck from the floor, ignoring the strain in his abs, and kissed Kageyama with as much strength as he could muster from the awkward position.
The kiss didn’t last long, but when it ended, Kageyama found himself breathless, shocked, and unable to take his eyes off of Hinata beneath him. He reached up apprehensively with his right hand and pulled on a stray piece of hair sticking up from Hinata’s red mop, and then moved the same hand up to his lips, where he ran his fingers across the surface that had only moments ago touched Hinata’s lips.
Hinata couldn’t wait any longer.
“So?”
Kageyama was surprised by the sudden noise and he jolted, going from embarrassed, unsure, and shy to cross in a matter of seconds.
“So what?!” He snapped, and Hinata’s expression slipped into a pout.
“Nishinoya said there were signals, that you staring at me for all of eternity met something, and I finally kiss you and you just yell at me?”
“… Staring at you was a signal?”
“He said… He said we’re crazy for each other!”
Hinata’s long lashes cast shadows across his cheeks as he glanced away, and Kageyama reached out to stroke his hair again, unsure of what he was supposed to do with this knowledge as he said, almost incomprehensible,
“I… Maybe you’re driving me crazy, but crazy for you…?” His eyes roamed over Hinata’s face, those lips – parted again – the flush on his cheeks, a sign of his embarrassment even when he pretended to be confident, the way that his hair flipped into his face even when Kageyama pushed it away… The tentative look in his eyes…
“You’re staring again.” Hinata muttered, and Kageyama glanced at him, slightly out of it and not exactly focused.
“Huh?”
“I said, you’re sta---“
Kageyama decided that he would shut him up with a kiss this time, and then he sat back a little bit, finally moving from his position of looming over the setter. Glancing to the side, Kageyama declared, surly and embarrassed,
“I’ll stare all I want.”
Hinata found that, this time, he didn’t want to protest.