Work Text:
Fukuro struggled with being the model eldest child.
The intensity and pressure to do things perfectly runs in the Hirugami family and each of the siblings find their own ways to create a healthy relationship with volleyball.
For Fukuro, his first crisis hits during college, a good few months into his professional volleyball career. He’s always loved playing but he realises it has also always consumed his whole being.
He doesn’t know who he is outside volleyball. He doesn’t know what he likes or what it’s like to enjoy things for the sake of enjoyment.
The line between doing things for volleyball and doing things for himself are blurry. Practice and games are time consuming, yes, but there are also off seasons and lazy days during long summer breaks that fuel his existentialism. He is more restless than he is tired. And so, he decides to take up on his roommate’s invite to go dancing.
In a dimly lit rooftop bar that night, is where he first spots Shugo Meian outside the volleyball court. He doesn’t know Meian but he doesn’t exactly not know him either. He’s a bit nervous, his social skills aren’t the best, but Meian starts an easy conversation with him long into the night.
When Fukuro’s roommate checks up on him to leave, Meian assures him he'll give him a ride home instead. Fukuro feels particularly rebellious and scared, seated on the back of Shugo’s motorbike, going faster than Fukuro ever has.
With Meian, he goes dancing often, and drinking as much as their athlete discipline allows. He asks Meian along for some cheap street food and then hikes, and cycling, and then fishing.
Maybe he’d been thinking too much lately of all the things he is not. Because in that moment, outside the volleyball court on a too-warm day by the river, with Shugo’s easy conversation, mischievous eyes and easy laughter, he is filled to the brim with the too-warm sun. He is satisfied.
Fukuro comes from a prestigious volleyball family. He has to uphold a good example for his siblings. His blocking is taking the V-league by storm. He is religious with self-care. He knows a bit too much about nutrition and not enough about interpersonal connection. He doesn’t know where volleyball ends and he begins. He’s at a complete loss for what to do about wanting to hold a man so close, you fear you might break him.
But he doesn’t have to, because nothing about the man is breakable. Because instead, the man takes the fishing rod from his hands and sets it aside. The man leans closer than he already was, to take Fukuro’s face in his firm hands and gently rub against the slightly overgrown scruff of his facial hair.
With sure eyes but a blush that says otherwise, he pleads for permission to consume him whole.