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It's been a week since they had returned from the Miyagi camp, and Kei has never been more convinced that the shock he got when Hinata lined up next to him on the first day pretending to be one of the invitees had been so grave that it left him with some lasting effects to his heart.
First, when he had seen Hinata lining up beside him uninvited at Shiratorizawa, Kei thought he would die of secondhand embarrassment. Next, fury rose in his veins, with a power he had not thought was possible before. His pulse soared high, his breathing hitched, and he yelled, for the first time in a long, very long while. His heart didn’t calm down even after the coaches called Hinata to the side – or rather, its pace picked up even more.
He waited restlessly until they returned, Hinata with that boundless determination in his eyes and that fearless expression he had always worn when he was about to tear down the walls before him. Then, when Hinata introduced himself, loud and clear, in front of the whole gymnasium as the ball boy , Kei’s heart skipped a beat. Seeing Hinata picking up balls after players he had defeated before made all kinds of weird things to Kei – he felt pain as if someone placed a thorn between his ribs, his chest heaved as if he was in lack of air, and his throat went dry with the illusion of a knot strangling him. It was all strange, new, and so dreadfully unwanted. Kei didn’t want to sympathize with anyone, especially not Hinata.
Hinata got himself in this situation, being brash and reckless enough to march into a camp uninvited; Kei was surprised Coach Washijou even let him stay. It was all rational and well deserved, a lesson to teach him not to run head-first into things.
But watching him hurt.
“Give it up already,” Kei said at the end of the first day, hands in fists inside his pockets. “Hurry up and get ready to go home, will you?”
“Tsukishima,” Hinata answered, not meeting his eyes. “I’m… I’m terribly sorry for causing–”
“Oh please. Save it for someone who cares,” Kei cut in sharply.
He didn’t want to care. Caring would’ve been annoying and unnecessarily stressful, it would’ve meant that Kei was not as level-headed as he wanted to and that he could not control his feelings as well as he thought he could.
Kei didn’t want to care. Especially not for Hinata.
Yet he did.
And so a few days later, he invited Hinata to blocking practice.
“Say, Tsukishima,” Hinata walked up to him mid-practice. “Were you may be thinking that I wanted to get some spikes in,” he started, and Kei’s eyes pulled into a line with irritation, “so that’s why you said that you needed to do blocking practice so that I’d have a chance to–”
“Not even close,” Kei said. He didn’t lie. He did want to see Hinata’s form, to break it apart and analyze it, because Hinata was one of those rare beasts who could see the block. He asked Hinata to help him with blocking practice for his own interests. To get better. To beat those short players who bounce the ball off the block for their own advantage. And maybe, just a little, because he had wanted to see that enthusiastic spark in Hinata’s eyes which he got when he spiked the ball.
Kei called it sympathy. He thought it must have been inevitable to take pity on the reckless guy who ended up being such a diligent ball boy.
He hoped it will pass once they are back to Karasuno and their regular schedules.
Except, now that they are back from the camp his heart still beats a beat too fast when Hinata turns to him, and he catches himself out of breath when those bright amber eyes fall on him and Hinata doesn’t make it any easier for him, being observant as never before.
“Say, Tsukishima,” Hinata calls out to him from the sidelines during practice, “I feel like, during the times when Koganegawa was setting, you’d hit the ball from a higher point…”
It feels weird, being watched. It itches under Kei’s skin, and his heart flutters as a newborn butterfly after a long time spent in a cocoon.
“I’m jumping as high as I can, though,” he replies, voice soft.
“For real?” Hinata asks. “Must be my imagination then.”
Kei catches himself looking after the boy who walks off casually. His heart squeezes, his blood drums in his veins, echoing his own words in his ears.
Why don’t you just sneak in, then?
Kei never would’ve imagined that Hinata would overhear his joke to Yamaguchi and take his words seriously – even less that along with the Miyagi camp, he would sneak into Kei’s heart, too.
Kei might need a cardiologist.
Or some love advice.