Work Text:
- elements;
It’s raining.
Kageyama isn’t too fond of the rain. He doesn’t like the way he always forgets his umbrella and ends up soaking wet, or the way his shoes get all muddy, because then his mother yells at him when he gets home. He always wears his volleyball shoes to school, because he has practice when he’s done with classes, and he doesn’t want to get them dirty.
He’s fine with windy days, even though they make it hard to walk properly – having to clutch everything tightly to stop it from being blown away, and to keep shaking his hair out of his eyes, because it itches. He’s okay with windy days, because the wind settles down every now and then.
He’s even fine with really hot days, when the sun is shining brightly, and he’s sweating buckets, because even then, he has the option to stop at the small store near school and buy a popsicle to cool him down.
He hates rainy days, though
The rain doesn’t let up, no matter what. It leaves its traces behind, even when it stops, and sure, it makes everything bright and green, and the weather cools down later, but that comes later. Kageyama prefers to be home when it rains, because he really hates it.
- colour;
He sees a flash of orange on the side of the road as he tries to hurry through the downpour. He’s drenched already, and there are shops around, that could provide shelter, but it’s late, he needs to get home. So when he sees the orange, he knows he shouldn’t, but he stops anyway.
The orange comes from a boy, he realizes, as he steps closer. The boy is short – probably a middle schooler – and has a mop of ginger hair that, Kageyama assumes, is what he saw.
But it’s not that.
He comes forward, and is a little surprised to see that orange is a glow, not just a colour. The boy is glowing, and for some reason, the rain doesn’t fall on him. He’s shining brightly, and on closer inspection, Kageyama sees him dribbling a ball, that looks ridiculously like the one he has at home, sitting under his bed.
He doesn’t know who this boy is: glowing, standing in the middle of the rain but not wet at all, dribbling a volleyball as if there’s no downpour.
He doesn’t know this boy, and he thinks he should probably go home now, but he steps forward and says, “Hey."
- nicknames;
The boy screams; drops the ball out of surprise. Kageyama catches it as it rolls towards him. He’s feeling cold now.
“D-dumbass! Don’t scare me!”
“Sorry,” Kageyama says, but he doesn’t really mean it. He frowns. “Why are you dry?”
“Huh?” The boy looks down at himself then at Kageyama, whose wet hair is clinging to his forehead. “Oh!”
He closes his eyes and makes a face, as if he’s concentrating on something. Suddenly, Kageyama stops feeling the small drops of rain hit his body, and he looks down at himself in surprise to see he’s completely dry, and no rain is falling on him, although it continues to fall around him.
“What the – ?!”
“Yeah, it’s just something I can do,” the boy says, grinning wide to show Kageyama his sparkling white teeth. “Hinata Shouyou.”
“Sorry?”
“That’s my name. Shouyou. It means ‘to soar’. But you can call me anything you want.”
“Dumbass…” Kageyama murmurs, not really meaning it.
“Offensive,” Hinata Shouyou says. “But I guess it’s okay. So to you, I’m Dumbass, from now on.”
- natsukashii;
“It’s true though,” Kageyama tells him, now coming up with reasons why Hinata Shouyou is indeed a Dumbass. “You’re standing in the middle of the rain, and it’s almost dark. Don’t you have to go home?”
“Says you!” Hinata Shouyou exclaims. “You’re also standing in the middle of the rain, don’t you have to go home? Or do you stop random strangers every time you see them?”
Kageyama scowls. “I was worried about you, kind of. Dumbass.”
Hinata laughs then. Somehow, Kageyama feels like he’s heard it before. Or if he hasn’t, it’s like he’s meant to hear it. He blinks once, twice, three times. Hinata takes the ball from him as he stands statue-like in his daze, and points at his shoes. “You play?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“Cool. What position?”
“Setter.”
Hinata’s face lights up at that – if it’s possible to light up more than already. He’s literally glowing; giving off a dull orange light that diffuses through the darkness the rain brings with it – and he jumps up and down. “Ooh! Ooh! I’m a spiker! Toss for me!”
Kageyama’s mind tells him to leave this weird boy alone and go home, his mother would be worried. His body disagrees though, and even Kageyama doesn’t realize it until he sees the ball in the air – clearly having come from the direction of his outstretched hands – and Hinata jumps up to hit it.
The feeling that rushes through him is pure nostalgia, and he doesn’t understand, because he’s never, ever met this boy before, and he’s never, ever had anyone manage to spike any of his hard tosses before. That was a hard toss. Subconsciously or not, he knows it was a hard toss
Hinata turns to grin at him and Kageyama feels himself choke up.
- promise;
“I have to go now,” he says. He doesn’t want to leave, though.
He wants to grab a hold of this boy; shake out of Hinata Shouyou whatever it is that’s making him feel so weird. His phone vibrates in shirt pocket and he is thankful he had worn a leather jacket, or his phone would probably have been soaked through by now.
“Okay,” Hinata says. “I’ll see you around then.”
“Where…are you…usually?”
Hinata shrugs. “I dunno, but I’ll probably be here next time it rains.”
“Oh,” Kageyama swallows. “So I’ll…uh, see you then.
He turns and walks away, but he’s already looking forward to the next rainy day.
- sparks;
He passes two weeks of frequent rains with Hinata Shouyou. His mother always asks if he kept an umbrella, and he always says yes, but it lies unused under his bed.
He tosses to Hinata, next to the boulder overlooking the river. The ball might fall into the water, so they have to be careful, but Hinata never misses a toss, and always spikes it in the direction opposite the flow of water.
They sit on the boulder later, when they’re tired and spent. Kageyama’s very late by this point, but he doesn’t mind or care.
He buys meat buns for both of them, sometimes. They sit together as Hinata wolfs them down.
“Have you never eaten before in your life?” Kageyama snaps one day, and Hinata grins that dazzling grin again.
“Feels like it.”
He shifts a little, and his shoulder brushes Kageyama’s. They both go still. It’s a weird feeling.
When they relax again, they have their hand in the other’s, and it sends the same electric feeling down Kageyama’s spine as when Hinata spikes one of his tosses.
- boy you came in like a hurricane;
Kageyama thinks about Hinata a lot.
Lying in bed, dozing off during classes, taking a shower, eyeing the extra seat at the table when he sits down for dinner with his parents; he thinks about Hinata a lot.
It’s a nice feeling, he concludes, although at first he’s not sure what it means for him to be thinking about another person so much. He understands after a lot of thinking though, and it’s a little scary. He knows everything about Hinata, except his family, where he comes from. He’s looked up ‘Hinata’ in the phonebook. There’s no family registered by that name. It’s strange, he thinks, but maybe they’re unlisted.
He waits for the rain; anxiously wishes it would start, and wonders how if it’s the rain he loves, or the boy.
- matches;
“I have a match coming up,” he tells Hinata one evening as they stand in their dry circles in the downpour. “Against this really amazing school for volleyball.”
“What school?”
“Name’s Shiratorizawa.”
Hinata’s face scrunches up in confusion. Kageyama frowns as well. How can anyone love volleyball as much as Hinata does, and not know about Shiratorizawa?
“I dunno about any school besides yours, to be honest,” Hinata tells him. “I never got much exposure to places.”
“What school do you go to?”
“You wouldn’t know it,” Hinata says, and his tone tells Kageyama to drop the subject. “Good luck in your match! Tell me about it when you win!”
“We might not.”
“You will.”
Kageyama attempts a smile, but it doesn’t really come out right.
- pain;
They do win, like Hinata had predicted.
It rains two days later. Kageyama wakes up at his desk where he’s dozed off during homework at the sound of the pitter-patter of rain against his window. He pulls on his shoes and rushes out the door, ignoring his mother’s yells about an umbrella.
Hinata is sitting on the edge of the river when he reaches there.
“You’ll fall!” he shouts. Hinata turns to grin at him.
“Yeah, but I’m fine.”
Kageyama doesn’t know what that means, but he’s not too sure about whether he wants to find out. Hinata stands up and comes to stand next to him, wraps one finger around his pinkie.
“Who are you?” Kageyama asks, his voice barely a whisper, but he knows Hinata heard it.
Hinata is silent for a while. “A rain spirit.”
“Where do you live?”
He points at the sky. “I come to this world once in a hundred years during the rainy season.”
“I’ll be dead,” Kageyama’s voice is dull and flat. “When you next come.”
Hinata smiles, and shifts a little closer. “Yeah.”
It’s funny, he thinks, how one word makes Kageyama’s world lose colour.
- firsts;
The rainy season ends in around three weeks, Kageyama calculates. Then Hinata will go. And Kageyama won’t see him again. He hangs teru teru bozu upside down outside his window, but he doesn’t believe it will help anything. He tries to ignore the rain when it next falls, but finds himself at the river anyway.
“You’re late.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Hinata smiles and Kageyama feels himself melt, heart pounding in his chest. He hates Hinata for making him feel this way when he’s only around for a two and a half months. He wants to run away, forget that face, forget those eyes, forget that his tosses were ever spiked. He steps closer to Hinata, takes his face in his hands and presses his lips against soft, unsuspecting ones.
It doesn’t last long. A maximum of three seconds. Hinata blinks when he steps away, face burning, but body feeling strangely light.
“That…was new. That’s never happened before.”
“What, some guy fall in love with you?”
“No, the kiss. It was my first. Although you’re also the first to fall in love with me, yeah.”
Kageyama blinks, then looks down at his feet. “Me too."
- perspectives;
Hinata knew this boy was special the first time they met. The first ‘hey’ that poured out of Kageyama’s mouth to drift to his ears, Hinata knew this boy wasn’t just any other person telling him to get out of the rain and go home.
Kageyama doesn’t smile, but his eyes do. His eyes look at him and they’re soft, they’re deep and they’re blue. Hinata could get lost in them.
Kageyama isn’t like all the humans he’s come across in his lifetime. He doesn’t intrude upon Hinata’s life immediately, like everyone else; doesn’t ask where he lives, doesn’t ask him where he’s from, or how old he is, or what school he goes to.
Kageyama is the only one who knew him as Hinata Shouyou, and not Hinata.
He thinks it’s probably not allowed, and he could get in trouble for this. It’s unheard of for a spirit to fall in love with a human.
- fluff;
“Can we go on a date?” Hinata asks one day, and Kageyama starts so hard he falls off the boulder.
“What.”
“I want to. Date, I mean.”
“How…how do we go on a date in this rain?”
Hinata looks at the sky, and frowns. That’s true. It’s raining too hard. He can stop the rain, but then he’d have to go back up to the sky. He doesn’t want that.
“Then can I do this?” He asks, leaning against Kageyama, head resting on his shoulders. Kageyama puts his arm around him, gives him an awkward one armed hug.
“Yeah. This is okay.”
Hinata closes his eyes and smiles.
- goodbyes;
“Thank god the sun’s coming out,” Kageyama’s mother says. “Even though it’s still drizzling slightly.”
Kageyama drops his fork in his plate with a clatter, says he’s late for school, sorry, and runs out of the house without an umbrella. Hinata is at the boulder, but his colour isn’t that bright, and he’s a little wet, Kageyama notices. The glow isn’t there. The rain is falling on him and making him wet.
“Oh, hi,” he says when he sees Kageyama approach. “I’m already late, but I thought you’d come, so I waited.”
“I’ll live to be a hundred and fifteen.” the words leave his mouth before he can stop them. His heard is beating and his tongue is out of control and his eyes are slowly welling up. The rain is getting slower and slower and Hinata’s light is getting duller and duller. “I’ll be a hundred and fifteen, and then I’ll see you again.”
Hinata chuckles. He steps closer and wraps his arm around Kageyama’s waist. He’s still warm.
“I’ll see you, then.” Hinata closes his eyes and buries his face in Kageyama’s shirt. Kageyama’s arms come to wrap themselves around his small frame, pressing tight. He believes if he holds tight enough, Hinata will stay. He closes his eyes and lets the tears fall when the warmth is gone and he’s holding nothing but air that smells like rain and just a bit like Hinata.
- conclusion;
Kageyama decides he still hates the rain. He despises it down to his very core.
But sometimes when it starts to fall, he’ll take the umbrella he never used during one season and walk around, holding a bag of meat buns in one hand.