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Tobio bumps into him an hour shy of sunset, tucked into the corner of a dimly-lit supermarket as he considers the two brands of yogurt before him.
One of them shines a washed maroon, the other a typical blue, and he’s so engrossed with navigating the fine print on the labels that when a voice cuts into the air his pulse stutters, before it screeches out his skin altogether. The yogurt sloshes in indignance.
“Kageyama,” Kindaichi Yuutarou says, blinking wide-eyed at him. “Hey.”
Tobio manages a singular nod. “Kindaichi.”
He watches as Kindaichi’s mouth opens, closes, melds into a flat line. Before finally, “So you’re back too, huh?”
There’s something about the month of June, Tobio thinks, that’s hellbent on slicing clean through the stitches of spring to summer, of warmth to heat. Of past to present to future to small supermarket in Miyagi. First the announcement of a week-long holiday for all players, encouraging them to reconcile with family, friends, hometowns. Then Miwa’s voice, tinny over the phone, can you grab some stuff at the old house for me. Now the dark blue of Kindaichi’s sweater, the exact shade of Kitagawa Daiichi and a barely-teenaged bruise.
“Only for a few days,” he says finally. The two cartons of yogurt sit idly in his palms, no longer indignant. Just curious.
Kindaichi shifts the weight of the shopping basket onto an arm and raises the other to run through spiked hair, though there isn’t much area for his fingers to cover. “Yeah, me too. Graduation just happened. And practice officially starts next week, so.” His hand tumbles back down. The quiet grows tenuous as Tobio watches Kindaichi’s lips twist, before the other just tilts his head and says, abruptly casual, “Kunimi’s back, too.”
A beat of silence inches by—slow, measured, creeping along the walls.
“You were,” Kindaichi starts, the same time Tobio tries, “I—”
They pause, a brief wash of quiet between them, before Kindaichi lets out a soft snort and turns away. For a moment, Tobio thinks Kindaichi is going to let him speak first, before a gaze is back on him, fire and conviction reminding him of the way Kindaichi has never yielded to him, not even for a second. Not now.
“You were serious, right?” The corner of Kindaichi’s mouth lifts, light turning his eyes something golden, something grown. “About playing with me and Kunimi again?”
Warmth curls around Tobio’s chest, and he nods as insistent as he can. “Of course.”
“Yeah,” comes Kindaichi’s voice. “I—Yeah, okay. Cool.” Dark blue sleeves, a hand, then a phone being held out to him. “I don’t have your number, though, so.”
His words ring choppy, stilted, alongside the rhythm of Tobio’s heart as he sets down the two cartons of yogurt. Wiping his hands hastily on his pants, he takes Kindaichi’s phone into his palms and begins to type, each press against the screen shaping the air between them. Delicate, cautious, but warmed by the beginnings of June all the same.
“Okay,” he says, for lack of anything else, as he returns Kindaichi’s phone to him.
“Thanks. I’ll text you.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, yeah. Cool.” A breath, a pause. Kindaichi’s eyes on him, familiar and foreign at once. “Uh. Bye, then.”
He turns away before Tobio can let out his own bye, shopping basket whirling with the movement, until it swings back around, brilliantly red at the last second, and Kindaichi is looking at him again, brows furrowed.
“Kageyama,” he says. Flat, awkward, a tone Tobio has never heard on his tongue before. Kindaichi’s not looking at him; he’s fixated on the yogurt, staring at it as if sunlight will burst out the sky-blue packaging with all the answers to the secrets of the universe. His voice again, louder, firmer. “The blue one’s better.”
And then he’s walking away. And then the supermarket lights runs a dull yellow, muted gray. And then he stares at Kindaichi’s silhouette and there’s an odd twist in his chest, cutting down his skin and pooling cold on the pads of his fingertips, pressed against the carton moments prior.
Tobio buys the one wrapped in sky-blue.
It doesn’t give him answers—not that he knows what to ask—but it lends itself to a sweet, tangy rush on his tongue and a text from Kindaichi a day later, reading Kunimi’s free Sunday. Does 3 work?
+
“Actually,” Kindaichi is saying. “Maybe we didn’t think this through.”
“You never think things through.” Kunimi nods at him, eyes lazy but no less piercing. “Kageyama. Hey.”
Tobio blinks. “Hey.” He pulls the gate open wider, letting the two step silently into the front yard, before he turns to Kindaichi, brows creasing in concern. “What didn’t we think through?”
Kindaichi twirls the dirtied volleyball in his hands, evidence of use smattered all across the once-white color. Tobio watches his eyes flit curiously around the yard of his old house, before he seems to register the question and his attention snaps back to him, sheepish. “Oh. We only have three people, you know.”
The two stare at him in silence for a moment. His gate swings shut. The image of Kunimi and Kindaichi—tall, settled into their skins, with time shaping the cut of their jaws, the style of their hair—burns bold against the green of the yard he grew up in, infinitely different from cobalt blue memories.
Three people. Tobio focuses back on Kindaichi’s words and tilts his head, confused. “So?”
+
The sun watches over in amusement as they attempt a ragtag, makeshift, 2 vs. 1 game to the best of their abilities. The air is warm all the while, spinning comfort into their skin.
It’s—Tobio sets the ball. Kunimi spikes it down, movement fluid despite his earlier complaints of rusted skill, and Kindaichi digs it cleanly, the smack against his arms loud and sure. It’s—the ball is flying back over now.
It’s fun. Tobio sets the ball again, pulse humming under his skin.
Back in junior high, Kunimi and Kindaichi had been the two who would most often stare at him in disbelief, in a convoluted brand of concern—for his muscles, for his sanity, likely—in response to any requests for extra practice. In junior high Kunimi and Kindaichi had also been, for reasons he still doesn’t know how to parse through, the two he had wanted to practice with most, out of all his teammates.
And now they’re here: Kindaichi’s serve rockets off Kunimi’s forearms, flying sideways into a bush. Tobio watches clear distaste paint across Kunimi’s face at the prospect of retrieving it, and wordlessly turns to head towards the greenery.
“Hey.” Kunimi gives him a look that makes him pause. Silent, dragging over time, before he just shrugs and says, “I’ll get it.”
Tobio blinks. Kunimi does a light jog over and back, holding the ball firm between his hands, and when he throws the ball up time leaps off its haunches and resumes its motion.
Eventually the rotation places Tobio and Kindaichi on the same side, a combined force against Kunimi, and the residual thread of tension wrapped around his heart is tugged free with every one of Kindaichi’s guffaws, slaps on the back, fist bumps, when Kunimi fails to receive the ball and is forced again and again to fetch it from where it’s bumbled off. They get narrowed eyes and flat looks thrown back at them, muttered complaints woven under Kunimi’s breath as the other wipes sweat from his brow.
It’s fun. Afternoon light dances across his skin and peels back any potential discomfort about playing with Kindaichi and Kunimi, all sharp laughter and ease in every rally. Tobio isn’t sure what to label them, this, it. Not quite friends, not in the way Hinata, Yamaguchi, loathe as he is to admit, Tsukishima, too, managed to wedge themselves somewhere quiet between his ribs. But still the two of them are stamped permanent somewhere on his skin—a stain that used to burn, a mark he’s learned to treasure.
The conversation isn’t constant, and Tobio finds it doesn’t need to be. Nothing has ever been constant with the three of them, after all. It’s enough with the rhythm of the volleyball echoing around his yard. With the occasional detail that slips free, like Kindaichi’s man, you don’t know how hard college was, like Kunimi’s yeah, my job’s alright. It’s enough with their sporadic questions about the Adlers and with the way—when Tobio tells them Hoshiumi-san reminds him of an overactive rabbit—they snort in amusement, even though he wasn’t trying to be funny.
Kunimi pulls a graceful feint the next time he and Tobio are teamed up. As the ball falls mockingly down the side of the net and bounces in front of his feet, Kindaichi just grumbles and looks like he’s contemplating cursing whichever deity decided sports were a good idea.
Tobio looks over and finds Kunimi’s eyes flecked with sunlight, gleaming as he catches Tobio’s gaze. Dump, he mouths. Dump. Tobio stares for a heartbeat.
When he gets his hands on the ball moments later, Kindaichi’s eyes trace his movement from the opposing side as Tobio raises his arms into a setting position. Something childish rumbles in the pit of his stomach, propels his hands as he switches last minute and dumps the ball millimeters away from the net. It plummets once again at Kindaichi’s feet, to his obvious disbelief, dismay, fiery indignance behind his eyes.
“Dude,” Kindaichi is spluttering, gaze bouncing between him and Kunimi. “Dude. Not cool.”
Kunimi catches Tobio’s eye again, lips twitching, and stretches out a silent palm in invitation. The sound of their high-five ignites warmth along his fingertips, his chest, washes over the long-faded bruise of fourteen-year-old regret.
“Not cool,” Kindaichi hisses, glaring at them. “That was so—oi, Kageyama, are you smiling?”
+
(“Kageyama,” Kunimi cuts in, voice flat and looking vaguely uncomfortable. “Stop staring at me.”
Tobio startles, peeling his eyes away in embarrassment. His mind has been disproportionately stuck on the smallest of details; ordinarily unimportant but today, captivating. The small dot of silver studded in Kindaichi’s earlobe. Kunimi’s hair, parted to the side. Half-smiles, laughter, a slap on his back. So poignantly different from memory that his mind reels, tripping over the cusp of knowns and unknowns alike.
“Kindaichi got his ears pierced,” Tobio just says awkwardly, roughly, looking at his hands.
A clamor sounding from inside the house alerts them of Kindaichi’s imminent return from the bathroom. Tobio is still looking down at familiar calluses and thinking of unfamiliar haircuts when a quiet huff seizes his attention again.
Then; Kunimi, flickering eyes, head angling to the side. “What, didn’t know people could change?”)
+
The conbini near Tobio’s house hails them over for a break, and Tobio finds himself sandwiched between the two as they pick through a hefty assortment of pre-packaged onigiri, the AC humming pleasantly around them. It’s too easy; it’s unnervingly easy, the comfort that has settled in his stomach.
Like this there isn’t a net separating them; like this there isn’t a canyon carved of rigid, unmoving stone between them, though Tobio thinks they’ve long since mended the cracks since his first year of high school. Like this, standing stupid and pensive in a convenience store, they feel like equals—and maybe that’s what Tobio has always wanted, rather than something as arbitrary as forgiveness.
Kunimi’s mouth twists, looking unimpressed when his eyes fall on the onigiri in Tobio’s hands. “You like tarako?”
“Hey,” Kindaichi cuts in defensively, “Tarako is good.” He turns to Tobio, eyes alight, and Tobio finds himself distracted by the shine of his earring again. “Have you tried the ones from Onigiri Miya, Kageyama?”
Tobio pauses, frowns as he sifts through memory. “The one run by Miya-san?” Vaguely recalls the name rolling off Yamaguchi’s tongue. “I haven’t tried any of their stuff.”
“Bro, what?” Kindaichi’s staring at him like he’s cut open the sky. “You seriously—” An exasperated laugh. “We’ll take you next time.”
Next time. Tobio blinks. Kindaichi blinks back. Light catches along the plastic onigiri wrapping and it, too, blinks in bright surprise at the words sprung into the air.
Tobio’s heart feels six sizes too big for his chest. “Next time,” he repeats, a touch uncertain.
Kindaichi seems abruptly fascinated with the blinking plastic onigiri wrapping. “Uh,” comes his voice, “Uh, well, I mean like, you—"
“You’re so awkward.” Kunimi’s voice is flat as he reaches out to snag a tuna-flavored triangle, but he isn’t quite looking at Tobio either when he says, shrugging, “We can take you next time you’re back in Miyagi. There’s one that’s close to my job, so.” His eyes skirt to the left of Tobio’s face. “It’s not that much work to get there.”
Unbidden warmth blooms deep in his chest, clinging tight and unforgiving onto the words. It makes him feel dizzy, abruptly, like the late-afternoon sunlight filtering in through the windows that strikes a little too close to his eyes, to his heart, to the stitching of past to present. Tobio swallows.
“Okay,” he murmurs, quiet.
“Right,” Kindaichi mutters hastily, already turning away. “This is so weird, man. Let’s just buy the damn onigiri.”
+
By the time the sun starts to dip, pushing orange and golden through the seam of the sky, volleyball has been abandoned in favor of sitting side by side on his porch, Kunimi and Kindaichi’s voices overlapping as they recount stories from the elusive first-year camp that Tobio has only heard about in spotty memories of Hinata’s excited chatter and a series of increasingly agitated expressions, courtesy of Tsukishima.
Kindaichi’s shoulders shake when he talks about a spiked ball bouncing off the floor and flying brutally into Hinata’s crotch. Kunimi shakes his head, but even he has the faintest smile playing across his lips, and Tobio feels a bit bizarrely like he’s walking on clouds.
“Tsukishima’s chill,” Kunimi says at one point, shrugging.
Tobio can’t quite control his facial muscles when they contort into familiar distaste, and Kindaichi only takes a brief look at him before he all but cackles, bending over in laughter and letting his voice ring out in the late afternoon silence.
“Tsukishima is a bastard,” Tobio tells Kunimi seriously. Kunimi graces him with an unimpressed stare.
“He is one on the court, I’ll give him that.” Kindaichi pulls a face as he looks up at the beginnings of the sunset. “Last time we played against the Frogs his blocks were crazy, man. I don’t even wanna think about what’ll happen when Koganegawa joins.”
Tobio pauses, rifling through memory. “Your team won back the last set, though.”
“I mean, yeah but—” Kindaichi whips his head around, eyes startled. “Wait, you watched the game?”
Tobio stops at the sudden weight of two pairs of eyes on him, curious. “Yes,” he replies, brows drawing together in light confusion. When further silence greets him, he adds on tentatively, “I watched the match with the Lions, too.”
“Oh,” Kindaichi just says, still looking at him strange. “I—oh. Okay.”
Silence engulfs them again, and Tobio picks at the fabric of his shorts, tongue sitting awkwardly in his mouth. He’s watched more games, partially to fill his notebook with fresh observations and partially out of honest interest to see how Kindaichi plays, but that doesn’t exactly seem like information Kindaichi should be privy to. Tobio runs a careful finger along the rough skin of his palm, and doesn’t say anything.
“What’d you think about the game?”
Tobio looks up, startled, but Kindaichi’s gaze is centered on the warm wash of the sky, not looking at him. Kunimi just snorts quietly, eyes dropping down to his phone and shaking his head.
“The spikers were all skilled,” Tobio tries, voice coming out scratchy and rough. “And the offensive plays were good. It’s—” He pauses, clears his throat. “You have a strong team.”
There’s a slight pause that threads through the air, fraught with charged sentiment, twisting hesitant around Tobio’s nerves.
“Yeah,” Kindaichi huffs finally. His face angles back down, lips curved upwards and eyes renewed with fire as he holds Tobio’s gaze. “Damn right I do.”
Tobio wonders if he should’ve pried a little more insistently at the blue wrapping of the yogurt. Maybe it would be able to guide him along whatever line he’s toeing, make him feel less like a halting fourteen-year-old and more like the adult that he is. Gift him with the knowledge of how to pull stars from the sky, or how to hold fire in his palms, or how to make conversation, peace, friends with old junior high teammates.
“Hey,” Kunimi cuts in suddenly, holding up his phone. “Look at this picture Oikawa posted.”
Then it’s Kindaichi, raising a brow, “Oh, no fucking way—"
The remaining minutes melt away. Easy. Marked by dogged laughter when Tobio frowns in annoyance at the selfie displayed on Kunimi’s phone, when his lips only turn further and further down and Kageyama, you don’t have an Instagram? And wow, you really only think about volleyball and his own muttered shut up that drops out of petulance, instinct, that he almost regrets, before Kunimi just rolls his eyes in response.
Easy. With how halfway through Kunimi’s Instagram story tapping, Tobio’s own face pops up in the form of an athletic-wear advertisement he doesn’t remember filming in the slightest, and Kindaichi’s head snaps back with wheezing laughter as Tobio’s ears burn and he snaps at Kunimi to skip it, or delete it, or however the hell Instagram works.
Easy in the way nightfall nudges them with a reminder that the day is growing tired. In the way they all raise their heads to look at a Kitagawa Daiichi dark blue sky and instead of an ending Tobio feels a beginning bursting out of the color, starting anew. Easy like Kunimi’s parted hair, Kindaichi’s studded ears, the rhythm of a volleyball echoing constant through time.
A silence tangles in the air when Kunimi and Kindaichi hover in the gateway on their way out. Tobio watches them blankly. Tries to formulate words in his mouth as he stands in the worn yard of his childhood.
“Today was alright,” Kunimi says finally, shrugging. Something quiet, a slow, whispered warmth, unfurls firm in Tobio’s chest.
Kindaichi huffs out a laugh as the two of them begin their exit. “Yeah, it was alright. See you around, Kageyama.”
“Yeah,” Tobio replies, feeling his lips curve up gently. His phone weighs heavy in his pocket with the addition of two new numbers, two more people, two rebranded stamps on the running parchment of his life, ink bleeding deep and vibrant. “See you around.”