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You'll never guess how I have spent the day; I have been to the Zoo.
The day after the incident at the Korean BBQ restaurant, Bokuto calls to give his blessings.
“Good morning.” Shouyou yawns into the receiver. It’s seven.
“I AM HERE TO GIVE YOU MY BLESSINGS.”
“You’re where?”
“HERE.”
“Where is here?”
A long pause. Maybe ten seconds long. “TOKYO.”
Shouyou swings his legs over the side of his bed, squinting at the thin film of light spilling in through the blinds. “We don’t live together, you know.”
Bokuto reconsiders. “That’s true,” he says jubilantly.
Another long pause. Toothbrush sounds. Then: “Good morning, Hinata.”
“Akaashi!” It’s Akaashi! Akaashi congratulates him, though he’s not sure why. Akaashi wants to know how he’s feeling. Maybe Sakusa is spreading rumors about him being sick again. Sakusa is convinced everyone on their team is secretly sick all the time. If you sneeze in a room with Sakusa in it, not only will you have to bless yourself, he won’t talk to you for three days.
Shouyou tells Akaashi he is feeling wonderful.
“Good enough to play volleyball?” Akaashi asks.
Shouyou checks his reflection in the mirror. His hair is standing up on one side and his shirt is crooked. Otherwise he looks normal. “Good enough to play volleyball,” he confirms.
“Good.” Akaashi is smiling. Shouyou can hear it in his voice. It makes him feel a little happy.
“AKAASHI, HAVE YOU BLESSED HIM YET?”
“Thanks for taking care of Bokuto-san last night,” continues Akaashi, who still hasn’t gotten over his habit of calling Bokuto Bokuto-san. He moves away from the receiver to say something. “We have to go now. Send Atsumu my regards.”
Before Shouyou can tell him they’re not living together, Akaashi ends the call. Shouyou crawls to the end of his bed and lifts the corner of the blinds. The city outside is the color of coffee with more milk than coffee in it. The skies are soupy and stuffed with clouds shaped like bits of freshly-popped popcorn. In another world, he thinks he’d like to eat it.
::
A brief summary of the first twenty-two years of Hinata Shouyou’s life:
He was born on June 21st, 1996 in a small hospital in Miyagi prefecture. He was the kind of baby who screamed when you picked them up and pissed all over your pants. He liked to chew on furniture.
He saw his first volleyball match on a storefront television set. The Little Giant was his first love. He played his first game in middle school, and lost it.
He went to Karasuno for high school. Kageyama was his second love. He ran away in a taxi halfway through their game against Kamomedai in the Spring High, and lost it.
He went to Brazil after graduating. He took a selfie with Oikawa. He came back.
He joined the Black Jackals! He kissed Miya Atsumu in an empty gymnasium! He kissed Miya Atsumu in a KBBQ restaurant!
He’s getting over the fact that high school ended the way high school did. He’s getting over the places Kageyama Tobio went without him. He’s all right now. He’s here.
::
“GOOD MORNING.”
It’s Atsumu! Shouyou pinches his eyes open with his fingertips. He fell asleep again. Atsumu blows air into the receiver.
“FUCK I’m sorry I meant,” Atsumu blows more air into the receiver. “Good morning, Hinata.” He sounds like a helicopter.
Shouyou rolls over onto his side. He curls his hands into fists and smiles at nothing.
“At the risk of sounding like a stalker, which I swear I am not, please look out your window.”
Shouyou looks outside his window. The morning is bright and dazzling and gorgeous and Atsumu is standing on the sidewalk, squinting up into the sun like he wants to fight it. Shouyou starts to laugh.
“Listen…”
“I’m listening.” Shouyou makes a face at him he knows Atsumu can’t see. “I’ll listen upstairs. Please, come up.”
Atsumu comes up. While he does that Shouyou puts on a shirt and compresses everything on the floor into the corner of his closet with the ball of his foot. He finds a nice pair of animal socks from Tsukishima and puts them on. He finds a cap he bought in Brazil and puts that on too. Then he goes out to greet Atsumu, who is standing awkwardly in the doorway with one hand in the pocket of his skinny jeans and the other hand curled loosely at the nape of his neck.
“Hi.” Atsumu’s hair is sweaty and un-gelled and falling into his eyes. Shouyou wants to eat it.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
Atsumu puts his face in his hands.
::
“We need to talk,” said Sakusa two months after Shouyou joined the Black Jackals. It was late at night and they were the only ones left in the locker room. Sakusa had stayed behind to clean his locker. He did this once a week, usually on Thursdays. Shouyou had stayed behind to practice.
“Okay,” said Shouyou.
Sakusa sat down two meters away from him and offered him a surgical mask. Shouyou declined it. Sakusa shrugged and put it away. He leaned forward abruptly, cutting the distance between them in half.
“What do you think of Miya Atsumu?”
Shouyou stared at him. Shouyou re-evaluated the last twenty-two years of his life in the span of ten seconds. He attempted to open his mouth but failed to do so and held up a hand to Sakusa in a gesture of peace instead.
Sakusa was unimpressed. “I’m unimpressed,” he announced. “I don’t know what he sees in you.”
Shouyou put his hand down. “Am I missing something?”
Sakusa grumbled to himself as he re-zipped his bag for the third time. “You’re missing eyes, that’s what. The fucking two of you. Fucking idiots.” He stood up and began to head for the door, stopping with his hand on the doorknob.
“Atsumu means every single one of his stupid suggestions, you know,” he said finally. He closed the door behind him.
Shouyou looked up at the ceiling. Sakusa cared a lot about Atsumu. That was nice of him! Though Shouyou was really quite lost.
He would find himself eventually. He would learn to hit their old freak quick with Atsumu. Atsumu would give him the tackiest fifty-thousand yen chocolates for Valentine’s Day and bring onigiri with pickled plum to practice for the next three weeks as part of a Mediterrannean deep-cleansing routine. By the time Bokuto lured them to the Korean BBQ restaurant in Asakusa, he would have had several realizations.
Ahh, so that’s how I feel about Miya Atsumu, he’ll think. He’ll turn in excitement to Sakusa and Sakusa will turn away expressionlessly. He’ll cut his gum on a bit of bone.
“Let me see,” Atsumu will say.
Instead of thinking ‘what the fuck’ Shouyou will think, ‘what the fuck’. As in ‘sure’. As in ‘if you really mean it, go ahead. I’m waiting.’
::
Shouyou manages to maneuver Atsumu out of the fetal position and drag him into his apartment because Shouyou is a champion. Atsumu is so red he looks like a lobster.
“Excuse me,” he says weakly, letting Shouyou pull him in by the wrist.
“You’re excused.” Shouyou smiles at him. He seats Atsumu on his sofa.
“Can I get you anything?”
Atsumu shakes his head. He is channeling his inner Sakusa by trying to be quiet and brooding and unhelpful.
Shouyou returns with tea anyway. The sofa in his living room was donated by Yachi’s mother when she moved offices and isn’t meant for more than one person, but Shouyou makes space for himself because Shouyou is a champion. Atsumu protests that he’s sweaty. Shouyou leans his head against his shoulder and closes his eyes.
“Why are you wearing skinny jeans,” he asks, feeling the city breathe through its teeth.
“You tell me,” Atsumu sighs.
“I like them. You have nice legs.”
“Hinata. You’re killing me.”
::
That night he dreams he’s playing with Karasuno again. They’re at center court in Tokyo; it’s the other team’s match point. The crowd burns like gasoline as Kageyama sets a ball for him in a clean shiny arc over his head. He swings. He misses.
“Oi,” says Kageyama. He stalks up to Shouyou, annoyed. “Why won’t you hit my sets?”
He’s not that annoyed considering they’ve just lost at center court, but Shouyou isn’t thinking about that. Shouyou’s eyes are on the bleachers. He’s looking for a face he saw there a long time ago, at the Spring High when he was fifteen.
“Oi,” Kageyama repeats.
Shouyou looks away from the bleachers. “I can’t anymore,” he says. “I have—”
“HINATA.” Someone’s yelling his name. He has brown eyes and devil’s teeth and slicked back hair.
“—I have him.” Shouyou points at Atsumu.
Kageyama smiles a smile so small he almost misses it. “That’s great,” he says simply. He gives Shouyou the hug his high school self secretly always wanted, and it feels like passing through a cloud in an airplane. Outside: a sea of wet, white motion. Inside: the thrum of blood in your body, warm and familiar, carrying you out of the ocean and onto land.
::
He calls Atsumu when he wakes up even though it’s three in the morning. Atsumu picks up, even though it’s three in the morning.
“It’s three in the morning,” he says hoarsely. “If I wasn’t in love with you I wouldn’t have picked up.”
“If I wasn’t in love with you I wouldn’t have called,” Shouyou says. The bird-shaped night light under his desk blinks at him.
“Hold on, I’m getting water.” The sound of sheets being pulled back, footsteps. A doorknob turning. “There’s a bunch of drunks hosting an afterparty on the sidewalk outside my apartment. Wish you could see it.” Glass. The sharp-soft whistle of running water.
“Okay, I’m back. You can go on.”
“I,” Shouyou tries to put the day-old laundry in his chest into intelligible words. He remembers half of his dream: center court, Kageyama’s annoyed expression, the glare of the lights above. He shakes his head. “What goes in a relationship?”
Atsumu starts laughing. It sounds like a parachutist falling from the sky, in great billowing arcs. “A relationship isn’t a cooking recipe, Hinata,” he says. “Though it’s not like I can follow those either.”
“You can’t?”
“I can’t. Seriously.” A pause. “What are you doing right now?”
Shouyou glances around his room and then at his feet. “Sitting in bed. Talking to you.”
“Mmm. I’m talking to you and listening to the afterparty on my sidewalk downstairs and wondering when these losers will shut up.” Atsumu hums again. “I think this goes in a relationship. What do you think?”
“I think,” Shouyou echoes.
He thinks: he thinks Atsumu’s sets are the coolest. He thinks volleyball is fun. He thinks Atsumu gets embarrassed around him a lot because he isn’t used to being honest about his feelings and he thinks that’s cute. For the most part, Shouyou knows what he’s saying and what it does. It’s just easier to let his mouth do the talking, while his brain goes for a jog along the dazzling white beach of the universe. Something in Atsumu’s expression makes him want to tease him. Something in Atsumu’s expression makes Shouyou’s elbows ache. Is it his eyes? Is it his teeth? Is it the way Atsumu says his name like he’s opening a box of fifty-thousand yen chocolates? Whatever it is, Shouyou wants to touch it.
“I think you’re a really kind person, Atsumu,” he says, and means it.
An interim, then Atsumu’s amused reply: “Thank you. I don’t get that a lot.”
::
The first person Shouyou saw when he stepped into the MSBY Black Jackals’ second gymnasium was Miya Atsumu. The second person he saw was also Miya Atsumu but bigger. He had noticed Shouyou’s presence by the door and stopped, mid-serve, to come say hi.
“Hinata Shouyou!” he smiled in a way that suggested he was in pain. “We were told you were coming.”
“ATSUMU. MY BALL,” Bokuto communicated from the other side of the court.
Atsumu’s hair looked like it had been through the dry-wash four times. It was more three-dimensional than it had looked in his profile on the Jackals’ website and seemed to contain several liters of scented gel.
“Your new hairstyle is really cool,” Shouyou said.
Atsumu, who had been bouncing the ball in his hands, flung it several meters into the air behind him.
“ATSUMU.”
“Thanks,” Atsumu said blankly. He looked behind him. His ball had landed on the other side of the gym and began bouncing towards the door. At this precise moment Sakusa Kiyoomi passed by in the distance, glaring pointedly down at his palms. Sakusa and ball met each other in a sacred union. Sakusa hit the floor.
Atsumu looked away and caught Shouyou’s eye.
“You didn’t see that,” he said with finality.
Shouyou beamed at him. “I did,” he said, also with finality.
“Were you always like this?”
Shouyou shrugged. “Were you always this pretty?”
The next time Shouyou and Atsumu met, Shouyou had tan-lines on his shoulders and Atsumu was twenty-three. Shouyou had finally gotten over Kageyama Tobio and his tan-lines looked really good. Miya Atsumu had slicked back hair and brown eyes and when he smiled Shouyou felt like his lungs were collapsing. They hadn’t tried Kageyama and Shouyou’s old freak quick yet but they would soon, and when they did it would be not only faster, but sharper, and steadier. Like how a broken bone heals stronger. Like how everything changes eventually but you can keep the bits you want to hold onto. If you just try hard enough.
::
They hold next month’s hotpot at Shouyou’s apartment because Bokuto broke the portable stove at theirs and Akaashi refuses to buy a new one.
“We’re saving up for a trip to Italy,” he explains as Shouyou leads them through the hallway into the living room. “Nice balcony. Are those aloe vera plants?”
Sakusa arrives thirty minutes later. He tries to explain why, but Bokuto’s trying to communicate with the aloe vera plants and Atsumu doesn’t care so only Akaashi and Shouyou get to hear about his hand soap emergency. Atsumu has been here since about two in the afternoon, lying upside down on Shouyou’s couch and blasting Fall Out Boy and scrolling through his phone.
They take stock of everyone’s offerings. Akaashi has brought Grade A Wagyu Beef. Sakusa has brought seven types of vegetables. Atsumu produces a bottle of sake from his backpack and sets it on the table, smiling like a Buddha.
Shouyou takes his favorite eggs from Miyagi out of the fridge, and cracks three.
::
“You’re going on a trip to Italy?” Atsumu’s mouth falls open. He’s leaning too far forward. The strings on his hoodie are about to go for a swim in his bowl.
“If you use the raw meat chopsticks to eat your tofu you’re going to die,” Sakusa’s saying to Bokuto, who is sitting next to him because he won at scissors-paper-stone. He’s arranged all their chopsticks neatly on two plates. Chopsticks for handling raw meat go on the One Piece plate. Chopsticks for cooked food go on the Hello Kitty plate. Both plates belong to Shouyou, while Sakusa has brought his own; it is Fruits Basket-themed.
Bokuto isn’t listening. He’s thinking about tofu.
“Yes,” says Akaashi, picking spring onions out of his soup and depositing them in Bokuto’s bowl. “We haven’t decided when, though.”
“Is that allowed?” Atsumu asks. Shouyou puts a hand on his shoulder and pulls his hoodie away from certain death. He feels a little bad about it because Atsumu seems invested in the conversation so he leans up and gives him a small kiss.
Atsumu turns to look at Shouyou. “Is that allowed?” he repeats. He’s pouting.
“AHEM.” Sakusa. Sakusa bristling.
“I mean,” Akaashi continues, unperturbed. “It’s Bokuto-san.”
“Let’s all go to Italy,” Shouyou suggests. Atsumu makes a strangled sound.
“Do we get to share a room,” he asks seriously.
Shouyou doesn’t get to answer him because Bokuto chooses this moment to finish thinking about his tofu. He picks up a pair of chopsticks. He picks up the wrong pair of chopsticks.
The tofu is cooked. The chopsticks are One Piece. The tofu is eaten.
“I fucking told you,” Sakusa says miserably.
“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi observes. “I think you used the wrong chopsticks.”
Shouyou stifles his laugh in Atsumu’s shoulder.
::
Bokuto calls at seven the next day to inform them that he has food poisoning.
“I HAVE FOOD POISONING,” he announces.
“Oh no, are you okay?” Shouyou kicks his legs against the side of the bed.
“ABSOLUTELY NOT.”
“Why is he so fucking loud.” Atsumu emerges from the onigiri-patterned blankets and drapes himself over Shouyou’s back. He wraps his arms around Shouyou’s waist. It tickles.
Atsumu smells like his laundry detergent. “Please take care, Bokuto."
“I’LL BE FINE. I HAVE AKAASHI.”
“We send our blessings,” Atsumu adds.
Shouyou thinks about this. He likes the idea of blessings. He likes the idea of sending them to Bokuto like presents in the mail, to be unwrapped later and held up against the light. Blessings from Shouyou and Atsumu. Blessings from his tiny apartment. Blessings of good luck and health and happiness, so much happiness you have to squint to make out the shape of the dazzling white world behind it.
“Yeah," Shouyou says. "We send our blessings.”