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It’s in the summer when Hinata asks him, “Where do you feel stuff?”
Kageyama doesn’t look at him, not yet. It’s too hot for another one of Hinata’s weird questions. He can barely think in this the heat, and it feels as though it’s draining him, oppressive in its might just to make him sweat. When he squints, he can make out the heatwave that shimmers over the railing. He feels hazy like he’s stumbling on a tightrope, uncaring that there’s nothing down below that will be able to catch him.
“Kageyama, did you hear me?” Hinata asks. The sun shines down brightly on him, and his hair looks close to fire, like the glowing embers of daybreak. He pokes Kageyama’s cheek to get his attention, and says, “I asked you where you feel stuff.”
“What do you mean?” Kageyama grumbles, shifting position to sit up better. A gust of wind brushes the back of his neck, and he nearly sighs in relief. He hears laughter from below them, the sound carrying itself upwards to curl into the clouds.
Hinata hums. “You know, where do you feel your feelings?”
Kageyama raises an eyebrow at him. “That still doesn’t make any sense, dumbass.”
Hinata huffs and points to his stomach. “I feel nervousness here,” he says, before moving his finger to point to his back. “And I feel the excitement in my spine, like electricity.”
It takes a moment for Kageyama to understand. “Oh,” he says.
“Well?”
“Hm,” he says, trying to think. He’s never really been one for things like these, but trying to locate his emotions doesn’t seem too hard. “Nervousness,” he starts. “It’s in my knees.”
“What about excitement?”
“Throat,” Kageyama replies.
“That’s where anger is for me,” Hinata tells him, and Kageyama looks just to check, but there is no sign of tension on his face. Hinata looks as he always does—relaxed and easy, all blurry, round corners, and muted incandescence.
“That would be in my chest then,” he says, and he points to the spot over his heart, but not quite. A bit higher than that, closer to his collarbone.
Kageyama looks at Hinata, who’s staring at the sky above them. The sun seems to have hidden itself a bit, as though to give them the slightest privacy. He’s grateful for the shade. “What’s all this for, anyway?”
Hinata smiles, just a bit. “I was just wondering. It’s kinda cool, you know?”
Kageyama shrugs. He just wishes it wasn’t so hot. “I guess.”
While the team rests during the break from practice, Kageyama sits by the door of the gym, letting the breeze pass by his skin in hopes that it will take him away. He wipes his sweat with a towel, holding up a hand to block the glare of the sun.
From the side, he watches as Nishinoya tries to teach Hinata one of his special moves, and Tanaka laughs at them, amused at the whole situation. The third-years are chatting in the opposite corner of the gym, and Sugawara pats Azumane on the back, grinning at a joke only he can understand. Sawamura is smiling, looking between his two friends with hints of both fondness and exasperation. Even Yamaguchi is laughing at something Tsukishima said.
They’re all so bright, Kageyama thinks.
Kageyama has realized easily enough that Karasuno wouldn’t be the same as middle school. They are different people with different personalities. It makes sense that he would have to adjust to the way things worked here. And sometimes he thinks that he has, that he understands the dynamics, the bonds that run deep, rooted in something worth more than just volleyball. But there are other days—days like this, with the sun on his back, dripping down something heavy in his shoulders, the wrong kind of beating in his ribs—that he thinks he hasn’t. That he never will.
He feels sadness in his shoulders and loneliness in his lungs.
It’s strange. He feels almost as though he’s an intruder, stepping into something already so perfectly built, so homely and warm. It feels like he’s not supposed to be there, or that they were wrong for accepting him, holding onto blind faith that he wasn’t rooted in selfishness. No, it shouldn’t be him here—not him, who’s come from cracked concrete and fallen kingdoms, learned wrong from right while tripping on his own feet. Not him, who only knows how to ruin good things, afraid of messing up and reverting to his own ways, so incredibly selfish. Not him, who’s been alone for so long he’s terrified he’s no longer worth enough to ask people to stay. He shouldn’t be here.
I don’t belong here.
The thought comes to him, unbidden, but strong in its resolve. It makes its way to the forefront of his mind quietly, like a ghost over his shoulder, leading him blind.
Because he isn’t like them—he’s hard lines and sharp edges, stained glass eyes, midnight on his skin and bones. He’s full of all the wrong pieces, always too harsh, a broken boy. He knows he’s a good setter, and he’s important to the team, but there are other important things too—and that’s the bond between teammates. If he ruins what they have—it would all be his fault and it’ll be just like middle school again and he can’t—
The thing is—Kageyama Tobio is used to loneliness, to holding his breath and feeling the weight of it bring him down. He stopped trying to find ways to breathe easily long ago, stopped hoping that someone would come along and tell him not to be afraid to exhale. He knows the feeling well, how to find it, and where to pin it down. He feels the ache close to his heart, but time has taught him how to move without puncturing the vessel, immune to the poison before it even has the chance to settle in.
Nishinoya jumps onto Tanaka’s back, demanding him to help him reach the ceiling. Tanaka howls in laughter but jumps anyway to see if they can get any closer to it. Sugawara cheers them on, and Sawamura is hopelessly trying to get them to stop. Azumane looks like he fears for their lives. Yamaguchi and Tsukishima are snickering, hands covering their mouths.
He hears Hinata laugh, loud and easy, a songbird fluttering through the sky. Over and over again, like a showering of sunbeams despite the cover of the roof of their heads.
(Kageyama wonders where happiness is for Hinata. Does he keep it tucked away, between his fourth and fifth rib? Does he keep it small and hidden, like Kageyama does? Is he afraid of letting it out, in fear that it will be taken away from him if he does?
Hinata laughs again, and Kageyama knows what the answer is.)
Daichi claps his hands, cups them over his mouth, and announces loudly that practice is going to resume. Kageyama watches as the rest of the team assembles back into their positions, knowing so easily where they fit. He sits there, unmoving.
I don’t belong here.
Kageyama doesn’t know what to do. His lungs are tired, heavy, and weary. He wonders if the person with the longest record for breath-holding had felt this way, too.
“Okay!” Yachi says, placing her hands together on top of the desk. Her notes are placed neatly in front of her, properly highlighted and written, indicating the parts that are more important than others. “Let’s get started.”
Kageyama glances at his own notes, sprawled messily on the table. There’s significantly a lot less than Yachi’s, and he can barely make out his own handwriting. He winces, embarrassed, and hopes that he doesn’t fall too far from Yachi’s good graces because of it.
“It’s too bad Hinata-kun couldn’t make it,” she says, looking at the empty spot to Kageyama’s side, where Hinata usually sits when they have these tutoring sessions. He said he couldn’t come last minute, saying that his mom went out and he had to take care of his little sister. “But he has been doing quite well in English lately, so I think he’ll be fine.”
Kageyama grunts. “He’s not that good.”
Yachi laughs softly, shaking her head. Pink blossoms on her cheeks gently like watercolor, and sunlight filters through the blinds to turn her hair into golden honey. “Well, he’s been doing a bit better than you, Kageyama-kun.”
“Not for long,” he mutters, a little flustered, but a lot more determined. He won’t let Hinata beat him—and besides, if he doesn’t get good grades, then he can’t play volleyball, and he really can’t have that.
Yachi hums. “So,” she says. “What do you need help with?”
Kageyama stops for a moment. He knows what his weakness is—not just in English, but in general, really—and it’s become a little bit easier the more he tries to put an effort, but it still doesn’t work out right sometimes.
“Words,” he tells her quietly. He doesn’t know what compels him to answer so honestly , but he thinks it might have something to do with the lack of sleep he’s been getting lately. There’s a feeling in his knees now, something seeping through the skin. “It’s not—I’m not good with words, and sometimes what I mean—doesn’t translate well into what I say.”
“Oh,” Yachi says. Her eyes are on him, warm and kind, open and sincere. “Well, that’s—that’s okay! I get—um, I get nervous a lot, so that happens to me, too. And it feels like I’m getting it all wrong and I’ll have to start all over again, you know? So…so maybe we can figure it out together? If you want?”
Kageyama stares at her, and for a moment, he thinks about all the words he’s never said. All the words that he’s forced himself to swallow back down, all those that never left his lips in fear of being shattered—where did they go? Did they find a home somewhere else, or were they buried in a place that only the unsaid go to? Is there a place for words like those, bottled up, left without meaning, unable to break the surface?
(Sometimes, he wonders—if he felt things less, maybe he would have an easier time speaking of them.)
Slowly, Kageyama nods. “That would be…good. Yeah.”
Her face lights up, and she claps her hands together. “Okay. We should probably get started then. But there’s no hurry,” she tells him, smiling. “We’ve got a lot of time.”
Once, after a long race down by the riverside, in which Kageyama earns his sixty-eighth win in total, Hinata looks at him with the morning light on his skin and a question on his tongue.
“Pride,” he says, blinking up at him, his chest still breathing heavily with the restlessness of adrenaline. “Where do you feel it?”
Kageyama looks back at him, a little breathless still, and answers, “My hands.” He holds them out, and he can see a light blue trace of where a vein rests under his pale skin, long fingers with callouses in his palm. Setter’s hands, his greatest pride, his best weapon.
And Hinata grins, sharp around the edges and brighter than the glare of the sun, that same kind of smile that leaves a mark and makes a promise to the heavens, that shows he’s unafraid to tell the world here I am.
“It’s the same for me,” he says, and at that moment Kageyama feels something in his throat, in that same place where he feels excitement—something like anticipation and exhilaration folding into one to be released from all the patience he’s built up, telling him that this is important, that this is what he’s been waiting for.
Kageyama finds himself smiling back.
“You know, Kageyama,” Hinata says to him, sitting outside of the gym, the moon above their heads, bones weary from the training camp. “You belong here.”
Kageyama sputters, a stuttering heartbeat in his chest. “What?”
Hinata shrugs. “Is there something wrong with what I said?”
Kageyama doesn’t say anything. There it is again—the words he leaves unspoken, trying to find stability in the open air. He’s still working on it, but they wobble and gravitate back down, never quite reaching his lips.
“I just meant,” Hinata says, a little bit softer, like the whisper of the wind. His fingers pick at the grass, almost shy, and for a moment, he smiles at Kageyama, turning to look at him. “It’s fun doing things with you. Stuff that I used to do alone, you know? I never really had a team before this or someone who could just keep up with me. A partner, like you. So—I’m glad you’re here, even if you are kinda dumb and mean to me sometimes.”
Kageyama doesn’t even rise to the obvious bait of teasing, opting instead to stare straight at the boy next to him. He watches as Hinata tilts his head toward the sky, to the stars above them, summer in his veins, over his heart, bones built from it. Hinata Shouyou is—he’s different. He’s not like Kageyama, all ground-eyes and ceiling-thoughts. Kageyama thought that the only thing they had in common is their mutual love for volleyball and the intense determination that comes from it, but here Hinata is now, going on about how they’re partners, how they’re friends, and how Kageyama might actually belong.
“I think I was kinda lonely before you came along,” Hinata says, smiling warmly as he looks at the setter. And Kageyama doesn’t dare breathe, trying to see if Hinata will take this oxygen from him, if he will use this air to take back the words he just said.
But he doesn’t. Moments pass, Kageyama counts the seconds like blinking stars, but Hinata doesn’t.
The smile that rises unknowingly to Kageyama’s lips spells out relief in six letters and thank you in eight more.
“Whatever,” he says, shaking his head, hoping that the shadows are enough to hide the colors on his cheeks. Something warm spreads from inside him, between his fourth and fifth rib, slow like a flower blooming in the spring. “It’s good that you’re not lonely anymore then, or else you’d just annoy everyone.”
“Hey!” Hinata whines, but then a smile breaks out on his face, and he’s laughing, the sound bubbling right out after him. “So mean, Bakageyama.”
Kageyama just hums non-committedly and gazes up at the sky above him. There’s that same warmth continuously spreading under his skin, and he has an idea of what it could be—but there’s something else about it, too. Something different.
It’s belonging, he realizes. And for that, he decides—
Everywhere. He feels it everywhere.
And for the first time in a long time, Kageyama lets go of the breath he’s holding, releases the weight in his lungs—and breathes easy.