Chapter Text
Shouyou was not invited to Japan Youth Camp in his second year of high school. Kageyama, of course, receives a return invitation, along with the likes of Hoshiumi Korai, Sakusa Kiyoomi, Miya Atsumu and other volleyball monsters of their year.
(It is in this moment, a 'sorry, Hinata-kun, I submitted a recommendation for you… but we didn’t hear anything back. I’m sorry.' that Shouyou realizes Japan is not his the way he is to Japan. He’s not good enough, not yet. His feet have sunk into the concrete he’s grown from and he can’t jump any higher here. He needs to replant his roots to grow, and it will not be in this city.)
The day after Kageyama arrives back in Miyagi, Shouyou meets him at their usual crossroads, feeling a 100 000 miles away. Even as they start their race, throwing themselves neck-to-neck into the splinters of sunlight that have just started to pierce the dusky morning, Shouyou sprints watching his black-blurred, volley-ball shaped goal posts shift alongside him, and it pushes him further, higher. He reaches the gym door (locked, as it always is at half past six in the morning) a quarter-step before Kageyama, and feels relieved he does not have another weight to add to his pile of frustrations.
“So. What did you do this week,” Kageyama says, glancing up at Shouyou where he’s bent over, catching his breath. This sends a thrill up Shouyou’s spine the same way it did the previous year, because this meant Kageyama believed in him to grow even if Japan doesn’t yet.
Shouyou isn’t able to verbalize all his thoughts though. Kageyama might believe in him to catch up but Shouyou still had so much to prove. Instead, he settles for a universal truth: “I played volleyball.”
Kageyama grins, and it is the almost-not-quite-scary one Yacchan and Yamaguchi has coached into him after he single-handedly scared five first-years into resigning. They signed back up once they saw his setting, but Tsukishima said that didn’t change any facts. Privately, Shouyou has long lost any fear of it. “Me too,” Kageyama replies, satisfied, and they pick their way down to the grassy knoll on the side of the parking lot to play more volleyball.
They settle into a comfortable rhythm exchanging tosses and tales from the weekend (“So—“ “You first Kageyama! What did you do? How was camp!!! Did you see Hoshiumi-san? You suck at texting, bleh!”). Shouyou has decided to work on his setting, while he still has genius setters in the flesh to learn from. Kageyama sets with a graceful pwofph!. Shouyou’s still sound like, psfhw, or sometimes badumph, which earns him reprimands from Coach Ukai.
Kageyama dutifully recounts everyone’s progress to Shouyou. It’s exciting; this time he has faces to put to names! They’ll be facing off against most of these people in Spring High soon, and Shouyou is excited to see how far they’ve come. How far he’ll go! He’s made promises and has had promises made to him—
“Oh! How’s Setter-Miya-san?”
At this, Kageyama frowns a bit. Shouyou sighs and grabs a fist-full of bangs that he squishes to one-side, then mimes Setter Miya’s scary serve with the other hand. “Kageyama, don’t tell me you forgot! The one with the twin!”
Rolling his eyes, Kageyama returns the ball to Shouyou before he replies. “I know that. His sets were amazing still.” The set Kageyama sends to Shouyou is the same, a beauty of an arc that contrasts the pinch of his lips, which he pulls into a constipated frown. Apropos of nothing, he adds: “He asked if I was dating someone.”
“Huh?” Shouyou isn’t proud of how he startles and fumbles the receive, but either it’s actually pretty okay or Kageyama is lost enough in thought, because he doesn’t call Shouyou out on it. “What?” Shouyou wheezes. “Why?”
Unconcerned that his partner has been reduced to monosyllabism, Kageyama's eyebrows furrow. He looks like he wants to eat the sun. Through twelve layers of volleyball-related denial and frustration, Shouyou probably has an inkling that he wants to be the sun.
Still facing skywards, not meeting Shouyou’s eyes as he tracks the ball instead, Kageyama shrugs. “He said: ‘Tobio-chan, are you and Shouyou-kun dating?’ and then he ran away. Maybe he was hungry. It was dinner time.”
Huh. Running away doesn’t really fit Shouyou’s image of the setter Miya. In his head, he remembers Miya as more of a force of nature, or a particularly persistent stuffy nose in January. Hehehehe, like one of those sneaky foxes.
He says as much, and Kageyama shrugs. “Sakusa-san says Atsumu-san is more like a flustered schoolgirl.”
Shouyou snickers. “And what do you know of flustered schoolgirls, Kageyama-kun?” They both know what he’s referring to—an incident last semester where two girls had come up to confess to Kageyama, but the setter had not understood a confession was taking place and accidentally accepted both of their invitations. At once. The scandalous idea of a threesome had caused one girl to faint and the other to slap him across the face.
This memory, though, strikes like lighting a realization in Shouyou’s mind. The lighting strike brands what will become the basis of Shouyou’s coveted six year thesis. Here is where the first miracle of the day happens.
“Kageyama!” Shouyou realizes with aplomb. He punctuates this realization with pointing, letting the ball drop in between his feet. “Do you think it’s like that!”
Kageyama scowls, probably more annoyed about their interrupted rally (They had been nearing their fifth best record, too.). “Like what?” he asks gruffly, going for the ball. Shouyou steals it out from under him, though, wanting to give this realization the gravity it deserves. He hunches, feeling suddenly secretive, and beckons Kageyama closer.
“Do you remember, when Yacchan confessed to Yamaguchi—yes I know Yacchan swore us to secrecy, Kageyama, but shh!—do you remember what she asked us before? And we didn’t know so she had to ask Yamaguchi but what she asked was if he and Tsukishima were dating! Because she wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to ruin their relationship!
“Atsumu-san was probably asking to see if you were available, Kageyama!” The implications of this suddenly strike Shouyou with a startling clarity: “Do you think…he likes you? Like-likes you?”
Kageyama blinks once, twice. In this moment Kageyama’s face is entirely too close to Shouyou’s, and in another reality, Shouyou might’ve thought about how the curve of his eyelashes was like the perfect arc of a four set. This Shouyou, however, is too busy revelling in his flawless deduction.
Then Kageyama smashes all of Shouyou’s hopes with a blunt: “No?”
Shouyou groans, loud and long. Before he can ask a wheedling why not, Kageyama grunts.
“He said I was a goody-two shoes last year,” Kageyama bites out.
This makes Shouyou stop and frown, because that didn’t sound like something that you’d say to your crush. Then again, there was that phrase Tsukishima used when Shouyou and Kageyama bickered a lot. Pulling pigtails? Yacchan explained that it was a saying for when boys were mean to girls they liked, which Shouyou thought was sorta dumb and said as much; flustered, Yacchan had apologized for making assumptions about him and Kageyama. Shouyou had waved a hand dismissively, since there wasn’t any assumptions there, it was just Tsukishima being Tsukishima!
With this explanation, he nods once and says to Kageyama resolutely: “No, I’m sure that means he likes you.”
Kageyama’s face seems to go through ten stages of emotions. Shouyou almost counts this as the second miracle of the day because he rarely gets to see Kageyama emote this much. “Huh,” says Kageyama softly. Shouyou feels like there should be more coming, but Kageyama just tosses him the ball and they start passing again.
Shouyou is still thinking about that soft, breathless “huh” Kageyama let out come night-time, when the sun has tucked itself away for the day. He lets out his own “huh” in return.
Here’s Shouyou’s third miracle of the day: Kageyama Tobio may like Miya Atsumu back.
✦✦✦
The thing with these miracles is that they are just thoughts Shouyou has assigned lofty names to. If you had told Tsukishima Kei the ‘miracles’ that occurred exactly 49 minutes before he’d arrived at Karasuno’s gym that morning, he would’ve called them ‘complete and utter misconceptions’. If Shouyou had decided to mention any of this to Yacchan, she would’ve glanced at Kageyama then Shouyou, then back and forth till she made herself dizzy, only stopping to whisper urgently at Shouyou: ‘O-oh, Hinata-kun, a-are you sure?’
If someone had asked Miya Atsumu, all the way down in Hyogo, for his thoughts, he would’ve passed out for real, like he almost did when he finally worked up the courage to ask a rival setter if his crush was available, (causing him to miss Kageyama’s answer and having been entirely too prideful to ask again) only this time it would’ve been out of antagonism instead of the mortification from being perceived.
But as it was Shouyou was only a 16-year-old boy with a body already bursting to full with passion for volleyball; there wasn’t room for many other recurring thoughts.
He really doesn’t think of the state of Kageyama and Miya Atsumu’s mutual crush—nor his own confusing feelings when he thinks about Kageyama and Miya Atsumu’s mutual crush—until he’s in Brazil and his phone starts blowing up with texts. From Kageyama.
Bakayama: Atsumu-san says hi.
Bakayama: image attached [a blur of black and blond, with a distinct blob of a thumb blocking half the camera view.]
2 minutes pass.
Bakayama: Shouyou-kun~~~ Tobio-chan sucks at taking selfies. Here’s a better one.
Bakayama: image attached [two boys posing, though the black-haired boy’s stance is a generous description of “posing”. The blond is holding an open Tupperware filled to the brim with homemade onirigi. Kageyama looks intensely focused on his snack while Miya Atsumu smiles charmingly at the camera, tongue (as Shouyou would come to find) customarily out.]
This exchange repeats itself once every month or so, when Shouyou assumes they have games in the same area. Both of them are now playing in the V-League after all. Here on the other side of the world, Shouyou breathes in the ocean breeze and the smell of gasoline and the hot smoke of beachside queijo coalho vendors. Today, he is playing beach volleyball in Brazil. Tomorrow, he will have climbed another rung on the ladder, and one day, he will stand on the same stage as them.
Knowing this, he looks at his phone again, fumbling with the brightness setting to see the selfie better under the unforgiving sun. He’s still not used to smart phones and texting, as a concept—half the time he forgets to text back, or he’ll try, but he won’t have signal at the time, and he forgets to send again. Kageyama will forgive him, because Kageyama is the same. Yet—
Sporadic as it is, every time Kageyama texts him now it is a picture of Kageyama and Miya Atsumu hanging out. Eight months in, it even looks like Miya is bringing Kageyama home-cooked food. That’s terribly sweet and makes Shouyou smile and it reignites the clumsy, red-hot feeling in his stomach that he feels when thinking of Kageyama and Miya Atsumu, shortened to KageAtsu, the first time he sees it. He does extra strength training and cools off in the ocean that night.
Floating in salt water 100 000 miles away from home, at peace with his progress and his life, Shouyou comes to the conclusion that: huh. Kageyama and Miya Atsumu are kinda cute together.
✦✦✦
Two years on sand sweeps by faster than a blink of an eye and Shouyou is back in Japan, throwing himself heart-first at any team with open try-outs. Watch me, he screams with the curve of his arm and the bend of his knees as he lifts off from solid, wondrous ground. Watch me watch me watch me watch me, he screams, and when he lands on steady feet just after his kill does he finds he has an audience.
Bokuto bounds over with boundless enthusiasm and gives Shouyou a high-ten, even though they had seen each other that morning when Bokuto dropped Shouyou off for try-outs. From the open gym doors, a blond-haired man—Shion Innuaki, #10, L, Shouyou’s mind rattles off, from the hodgepodge of website bios and Bokuto’s stories during the six-hour drive from Tokyo—whistles appreciatively.
Next to him, Miya Atsumu—looking nothing like he did in high school, and everything like the charming, self-assured setter on two year’s worth of Shouyou’s chat history—stands stock-still, eyes wide. “Tsum-Tsum!” Bokuto calls! “Come say hi! You’ve been non-stop talk—“
Miya unfreezes to loudly cut Bokuto off, in a Hyogo accent that Shouyou was hearing a lot today, in Hirakata. “Nonstop talkin’ ‘bout the nice weather we’re havin’, right Bokkun? Moderate, don’tcha think? Mild? Good?”
Without moving the rest of his upper body, Bokuto tilts his head. He points innocently at the still-wet umbrella in Miya’s hand and cuts him off become he can keep spouting synonyms for mild that weren’t really all that mild. “Isn’t it raining out?”
It is at this moment that Shouyou decides Miya is too far away, and makes his approach. Try-outs are momentarily paused, anyways, with the arrival of the first and second string players.
Shouyou walks right up to Miya intending to shake his umbrella-less hand. This proves difficult because Miya perplexingly seems to think Shouyou is reaching for his umbrella, and offers that instead, so Shouyou holds Miya’s hand that is holding the umbrella. Water drips between them, but Shouyou has braved oceans to get to where he is. A wet toe won’t stop him from making a good impression on Kageyama’s crush.
“Miya-san!” Shouyou yells. “It’s good to see you!”
Miya is looking increasingly red in the face. He has been caught off-guard since he’d entered his regular gym, but Shouyou doesn’t know by what and is kind enough to ignore it. It’s funny; he thinks he expected something different.
“Atsumu. Atsumu is fine.” Miya-now-Atsumu finally responds, weakly. Bokuto thumps Atsumu on the back three, hearty times; Shouyou feels it from where he’s still holding Atsumu’s hand (and umbrella). The coaches start calling the hopefuls back to court.
“Good luck my disciple!” Bokuto calls out. Shouyou beams a thanks and starts to extract himself, straining his head to look over his shoulder at the line-up.
Atsumu still hasn’t let go. Shouyou starts, “Atsumu-san, can you—”
Then Atsumu suddenly tightens his grip on Shouyou, their eyes meet for the first time—they’re a molten gold, he notices in surprise—and Atsumu’s flustered expression smooths out into a grin. It’s not wide and charming, like the ones Shouyou had gotten to know through photos and backseat texts in Brazil, but confident and hungry and real. It strikes a chord in Hinata, a little ball that starts to unravel, and only spools further when the setter speaks.
Atsumu’s tone is sober when he proclaims: “Shouyou-kun, I’m gonna set for ya.”
Shouyou grins back. Five days later, he gets the call that he makes it.
✦✦✦
Atsumu sets for Shouyou, and Shouyou is flying higher, faster, better than he’s ever flown before. This is not an exaggeration: in three months they will break Shouyou and Kageyama’s record speed for the freak quick. Atsumu foretells this; Shouyou, high off his first in-game spike on Japanese soil (no longer concrete, no longer sand), believes him. Three months pass, the ball practically breaks the sound barrier in a practice game against a local university team, and Shouyou is convinced Miya Atsumu is a miracle-maker.
Shouyou discovers he actually really likes Atsumu—not that he hated him before, or anything, but at 22 he can recognize his own high-school crush on Kageyama for what it was, and how he might’ve been somewhat resentful of Atsumu if he’d not been too focused on volleyball. As it is he’s over both, and it’s a good thing. Atsumu plays amazingly, walks Shouyou back to his doorstep after every late-night extra practice, wears his heart on his sleeve despite his mean jabs. His jokes aren’t so much funny as his delivery and his earnestness that makes Shouyou laugh.
Shouyou can see why Kageyama likes him, and vice-versa.
Atsumu’s someone who values skill and love for the sport. It’s evident in the way he’ll unfailingly stay with Shouyou for extra practice; the way the only thing longer than his hair routine is his hand maintenance routine; the way he sets with ten fingers always because he knows no other way to love. The only person Shouyou knew that loved volleyball as much as himself was Kageyama, and so it made sense that Atsumu was drawn to Kageyama.
He tells this all to the MSBY team one day, while Atsumu's gone fixing his hair in the washrooms, after Bokuto mentions offhandedly, hey has anyone else noticed how Tsum-Tsum’s been staring at a lot at Shouyou lately??? Shouyou’d waved off the misunderstanding, even though he gets a bit flustered at the thought. “It can’t be,” he says easily, “Atsumu-san’s liked Kageyama for forever now.”
Like the sun had gone and ejected itself out of the solar system, he feels everything slow to a halt around him.
Sakusa blinks rapidly, which is definitely a step removed from a typical Sakusa reaction. The other team members appear flummoxed as well, so Shouyou feels the need to explain himself and launches into his six year thesis.
He finishes with saying that of course Atsumu-san and Kageyama are pining for each other, wasn’t it obvious at their recent Alders game! Atsumu-san was definitely shooting glances at Kageyama the whole game and post-game. Did Bokuto-san confuse that with how after the game Shouyou hugged Kageyama and Atsumu-san paused to stare jealously at Shouyou the entire hug???
Softly, but with feeling, Sakusa says: “What the fuck.”
Bokuto recovers next. “That sure was a coherent thesis on the state of the KageAtsu situation, Shouyou! Hey, hey, Omi-kun, did I use ‘coherent’ right?”
Sakusa ignores him. He seems to have recovered from his sudden chronic eye twitch. Shouyou in his stead nods and says he thinks that’s right! Bokuto preens, and starts explaining to the team how he knows what a thesis is, because Akaashi had lived on coffee and conbini onigiri his whole senior year writing one, oh, hey Omi-Omi, did you have to write a thesis since you went to Waseda too?
Sakusa ignores him again and fixes his unblinking eyes on Shouyou, who gulps. With the long-suffering sigh of someone who knows they are asking something they’ll regret, Sakusa demands: “Hinata, how long have you thought Miya and Kageyama were… a thing?”
“Since high school,” Shouyou answers truthfully, glad it was an easy question. “Second year, I think? I figured it out because at Youth Camp, Atsumu asked if Kageyama was dating someone, so we figured he was interested in him since!”
“Someone,” Sakusa says darkly.
“Yeah! He thought Kageyama was dating me, isn’t that funny?” Shouyou laughs but stops when he notices Sakusa isn’t laughing too. “Omi-san?”
“No. It wasn’t funny. But this is,” Sakusa concludes, and walks away.
✦✦✦
The team, minus Atsumu, ambushes him in the changing room.
“Hinata, you know Atsumu lives the opposite way from you, right?”
“Yeah! He says he needs the exercise, though,” Shouyou responds. He has not forgotten that they are professional athletes who spend their days exercising, and then exercise some more, for fun.
“Mmmmhmmm,” Thomas allows, sounding unconvinced.
Wan-san tries: “Didn’t he like, dramatically propose that he’d set for you one day?” Underneath his breath he mutters something like, why the fuck did he know the comings and goings of the 2014 Volleyball Spring High. Atsumu’s big mouth, that’s why.
Shouyou nods vigorously. He’s in awe of Atsumu’s ability to make miracles come true. “Yeah! Isn’t it funny that we’re on the same team now?”
Inunaki stares at him flatly for a whole minute, before throwing his hands in the air in the universal ‘I-give-up’ gesture.
Thankfully, Bokuto has never learned the word for subtlety, literally. “I dunno, Shouyou, it sounds kinda like Tsum-Tsum might just be in love with you.”
Shouyou forces out a laugh at that absurd thought. He has had six years of evidence showing otherwise and frankly he’s a bit confused that other people can’t see how absolutely soft Atsumu becomes when Shouyou talks to him about Kageyama. “Because he sets for me?” he teases, “Wouldn’t he be in love with you too, then, Bokuto-san?”
Bokuto bulldozes on, unbothered. “That’s different. ‘Sides, I got Tetsu! But really, Tsum-Tsum would lie down in a puddle for you. Trust me—I got a sixth sense ‘bout these types of things!”
Shouyou shrugs, not wanting to contradict his mentor. Bokuto’s sixth sense sniffed out absolutely heavenly hole-in-the-wall yakitori spots and notably once, a burgeoning moth infestation in the storage closet. It was deadly perfect, in all ways except this one, though. “I dunno, Bokuto-san,” he allows non-committally, “what about Kageyama-kun?”
Behind his back, the rest of the team glance at Meian-san, almost expecting him to try something, but their captain just walks out of the changing room with a reminder to dress nicely for the charity gala tomorrow night.
Atsumu pokes his head through the swinging door instead, scowling without any real heat. “Yer all slowpokes, today. What’s up?”
Everyone clams up. Shouyou sees a perfect opportunity to prove his point, and leaps across the room in three quick steps to pop up in front of Atsumu. “Nothing! Atsumu-san, are you also excited to see Kageyama, tomorrow?” he asks, brightly, smiling teasingly in Atsumu’s face.
Atsumu, as expected, flushes a deep red, leaning away. “U-uh.”
Behind the doorframe, having waited outside with Atsumu, Sakusa huffs a laugh.
Shouyou continues to beam. See? Clearly, Atsumu-san was in love.
✦✦✦
The JVA’s charity gala featuring the Div 1 players is hosted in Osaka this year, so Kuroo had come down early to get in some quality time with his boyfriend. They’d all gone out for drinks the night before to catch up a bit, and Shouyou was pleased as punch to see his Tokyo mentors were still a riot. Bokuto and Kuroo were the type of couple that never made you feel like a third wheel, always explaining their inside jokes (of which there were many), at least until the part in the night where they both developed a lingering, longing look in their eyes, and Shouyou was quick to excuse himself.
Before that, though, Bokuto had asked Shouyou to recite his six year thesis for Kuroo. Shouyou'd jumped at the opportunity to finally get someone on his side (Kuroo wasn't the type to pass up on an opportunity to rib on Bokuto, boyfriend or not), but instead he just got two grown men laughing so hard they'd toppled out of the izakaya booth. Kuroo'd wiped tears from his eyes as he excused himself to "make a business call", leaving Shouyou to pout at the betrayal.
He still caught an early ride in to the venue the next day with them, though, since Bokuto is Shouyou's ride and Kuroo is helping with set-up. He’s been here since the afternoon helping unstack chairs. That means he’s already inside when other guests start arriving, so he’s one of the first to see Miya Atsumu stroll up to the entrance line Kuroo is manning, and Shouyou feels his heart skip.
The thing is—they’re athletes. They spend 80% of their waking hours sweating over volleyball and while Shouyou wouldn’t have it any other way, it does mean a proportionate 100% of his closet is sportswear and sports sponsor-provided wear. This is not uncommon: all the athletes he knows grew up with the same Vabo-chan pullover. Atsumu wears his during morning runs when he’s woken up too late to be assed into changing (not too late to do his hair, though), and Shouyou started wearing his since he figured matching would be cute. After that, Atsumu wakes up late more often.
Atsumu is not wearing Vabo-chan pyjamas today. Atsumu’s wearing a wine-red suit that screams bespoke. It also screams dry-clean only and if you spill a drink on this, someone will die. In a stunning strike of inspiration from the heavens, someone’s gone and embroidered gold accents into the detailing, and when Atsumu frantically pats down all his pockets to find his gala tickets, Shouyou catches a glimpse of shimmery gold pattern in the lining.
He looks absolutely devastating.
Shouyou feels a bit conscious of his old, accidentally machined-washed graduation suit (too tight around the shoulders, only barely fitting because at the age of 17 it had been too wide) but makes a note to compliment Atsumu when he runs into him. He knows Atsumu’s more self-conscious about his image than he lets on, and Shouyou thinks Atsumu looks perfectly fine—more than, in fact. Besides, Kageyama’s here, so Atsumu’ll appreciate the confidence boost around his crush.
Speak of the devil—Shouyou runs into Kageyama. Kageyama is wearing a suit too.
“Kageyama!” Shouyou greets. It’s been a few weeks since the Alders v. Black Jackals match, but they still haven’t had a proper chance to catch up since his return. The Alders had to head back immediately for some sort of sponsorship commitment, and with the appearance of practically the entire 2014-2017 volleyball circuit post-game, Shouyou hadn’t had a chance to properly tease Kageyama about his long-time crush.
He takes it now, elbowing Kageyama cheekily. Kageyama, for his part, looks stupefied.
“What.” Kageyama states. “I’m not pining after Miya-san. I have a boyfriend?”
“B-boyfriend!” Shouyou blurts out, then jump-tackles him. And get this: Kageyama blushes.
More correctly, he scowls, turns red, and pushes Shouyou off him. “Get off me, idiot, we’re in public,” Kageyama mutters.
“Kageyama! Congratulations!” Shouyou yells. He finally lets go, but holds Kageyama by the shoulders to look him eye-to-eye. He feels warm, happy for his best friend he thinks. “Does he make you happy?”
Kageyama’s eyes widen, and he looks away. Shouyou almost thinks he’s not going to answer, and just push him off, but then he nods. Softly, in the same tone as the ‘huh’ all of six years ago, he breathes: “Yeah.”
Unfortunately, they’re at a charity gala for the sheer purpose of entertaining rich socialite guests so they’ll donate to sports funds for underprivileged children, so Shouyou’s next words are cut off by a JVA employee running up to introduce a CEO to “Kageyama-sama.” As Kageyama is ushered away, Hinata excitedly pantomimes a ‘tell me more after!’ after him while Kageyama shoots him a stink-eye back that means 'fine'.
Satisfied, Shouyou turns away, thinking about how happy Atsumu must be—it must be a recent development, right? He’s also hungry, so he swivels towards the buffet line.
Speak of the other devil—would that make him an angel? Atsumu comes pushing his way through the crowd. Shouyou waves and smiles brightly.
“Atsumu-san! Congratuations! On finally getting together with Kageyama!”
Atsumu runs away.
✦✦✦
After his epiphany with Kageyama, and then the following perplexing interaction with Atsumu-san, Shouyou needs a breather. He excuses himself from an approaching Enaga-san after giving a quick quote, and finds his way to the second-floor balcony of the venue, where he runs into someone he didn’t expect to see tonight.
“Tsukishima!” Shouyou scurries over to the corner of the balcony his tall friend has esconded himself in. It’s so discreet Shouyou’s rather surprised he doesn’t find Sakusa-san hiding from all their germs there, too, but it’s just Tsukishima, a single sad-looking lost glove, two potted plants and a full bottle of wine that Tsukishima takes a long pull straight out of.
Tsukishima studies Shouyou for a solid thirty seconds, probably trying to figure out if there was something he could do to make Shouyou leave. The answer is no, and when he sighs in acceptance Shouyou takes that as an invitation to push himself onto the railing next to Tsukishima. His squint says, 'if you fall I’m not catching you' and Shouyou gives a double thumbs-up in response.
“Hiding from Kuroo-san and Bokuto-san,” Tsukishima responds eventually.
“Ah. But how are you here in the first place? I thought they only invited Div. 1 players,” Shouyou explains. He taunts, “Who’s the volleyball crasher now?”
Tsukishima tsk’s. “First of all, any other person, that would’ve been insulting. It’s you, so it’s still insulting, but in a different way.” He takes another swig. “Second, it’s still you: I’m a plus-one tonight.”
Shouyou has long since learned to ignore the insulting parts during conversations with Tsukishima—it makes conversations with him easier anyways. Also, Shouyou has learned how to give as it gets, but he’s just not really feeling it, today.
“A plus-one? Aren’t those, like, super hard to get and only for super serious relationships?” Shouyou knows this because Meian-san was the only one who got to bring his wife along for the free date night. Innuaki-san had moaned about how it was because Barnes’d kept bringing a different date every event, and their management finally decided that was a bad look for the team.
“Kuroo-san came through. Got all in my face about it on the phone last night, saying a Div 2 player like me probably needed the ‘networking’. I do, of course. But had I knew they had to have ulterior motives,” he mutters into his bottle.
“You’re Kuroo-san’s plus one? But he’s with Bokuto?” Shouyou is trying to ponder the implications of this. Does he have to defend Bokuto-san’s honour? Does Bokuto-san know? Kenma would know, for sure.
Tsukishima cuts him a perplexed look, mid-sip. “No? I’m Tobio’s.”
This causes Shouyou to almost fall off the balcony. Tsukishima, a liar, does reach out to grab him, and also toss him onto the balcony ground himself. Shouyou rubs his sore butt and doesn’t even feel it through twelve layers of confusion.
What comes out is: “But Kageyama is dating Atsumu-san.”
Tsukishima looks at him in horror, which apparently prompts Shouyou to explain his six year thesis for the third time in a matter of weeks.
The Tsukishima of Karasuno High would’ve not deigned to give this nonsense an answer, and would’ve instead laughed at Shouyou’s face. Tsukishima Kei, Sendai Frogs MB, boyfriend of three years to one Kageyama Tobio, still laughs in Shouyou’s face for the following five minutes straight after stating the fact. By the end of it, Shouyou’s feeling pretty grumpy and not any less confused.
“Honestly,” Tsukishima says, still laughing a bit, “it was your fault for letting Tobio interpret a social situation. This is such a complete and utter misconception I cannot even begin to identify where it all went wrong. I took the king home to meet my parents last year.”
Shouyou is still having difficulty processing this, but it’s easy to snipe at Tsukishima. “STINGYSHIMA. You never tell me anything!” Kageyama doesn’t tell him anything either!
In a half-hearted apology (it’s mostly pity),Tsukishima offers Shouyou the bottle of wine. “It’s no Kahlua and Milk,” he says a bit mournfully. Shouyou, who doesn’t care if it’s Kahlua and Milk, much less 1993 red, tilts the bottle to the sky and chugs. It tastes terrible, and Tsukishima fumbles Shouyou's hand-off so some wine spills on the ground between them.
“So. Atsumu-san isn’t with Kageyama? He doesn’t have a crush?”
Tsukishima lets out a long-suffering sigh, though after all their history it lacks heat. “Unless Tobio’s been secretly seeing Miya behind my back for the past six years—” Shouyou opens his mouth to interject— “He hasn’t, idiot.” Hinata pouts.
“However,” Tsukishima continues, and his face sours like he can’t believe he’s saying this. “I wouldn’t say Miya doesn’t have a crush.”
This causes Shouyou to pause. Replay many, many conversations, with this new-found context. Atsumu, who's texts (half selfies, half compliments on selfies Shouyou'd sent in return) made up half of Shouyou's chatlog with Kageyama before Shouyou gave Atsumu his number when they became teammates. Atsumu, who walked him home from practice. Atsumu, who’d been excited to show him around Hirakita and took him to his brother’s onigiri shop on a long weekend. Atsumu, who offered to set him all the balls he wanted after practice, then shyly asked, if they were good enough. Atsumu, dressed up to impress in a very fitting, very nice suit.
“On someone else,” Tsukishima says, like Shouyou’s a particularly dense brick.
Shouyou, a particularly dense brick, or perhaps just a very volleyball-blinded sun, says: “Wait. You mean...”
They’re interrupted by a wide-eyed Atsumu, in his stupidly-expensive suit, stumbling out onto the balcony like he’d been pushed.
(After his disastrous failed confession with Shouyou, where he found out the boy he’s been crushing on for the past seven years thought he’d been dating his rival in love for the past six, Atsumu’d escaped to the least crowded corner of the banquet hall. Naturally, having staked his claim to this domain, Sakusa had been there, and had not been pleased to see Atsumu.
However, he had also taken pity on Atsumu and had thrown him a bone.
“Miya,” Sakusa said. “This is no longer funny. You—a germ—are in my no-germ zone,” and Atsumu had nodded acceptingly at this, “and that’s fucking annoying but mostly you’re dumb because Miya, if Hinata thought Kageyama-kun was dating you, then…” he pauses.
Atsumu had realized: “They’re not fucking dating!”
And Sakusa had thrown Atsumu out of his corner using his handkerchief. He runs into Bokuto and his sketchy-looking boyfriend immediately, who push him towards the balcony. Atsumu doesn’t even care about the rough-housing, intent on finding Shouyou, on finally confessing, thinking that it’s not Kageyama. Atsumu’s his setter. Miya Atsumu is going to be Hinata Shouyou’s boyfriend. Take that Tobio, he’s the one setting to Hinata now, hah—)
So at the same time Shouyou asks, “Atsumu-san likes me?” Atsumu blurts out: “I set for you. Not Kageyama.”
Shouyou blinks. Well of course. Kageyama is a setter. He thinks he says this aloud.
Tsukishima scoffs and pushes past Atsumu to re-enter the banquet hall, muttering under his breath about how Kuroo-san and Bokuto-san owed him more than a bottle of wine, for that talk. They’re alone.
Atsumu feels his soul leaving him, but Shouyou has witnessed this happen not a scant thirty minutes earlier (had it really only been half an hour?) and he swoops in before Atsumu can turn tail. “I didn’t mean that,” Atsumu says. “Sorry, can ya just forget that. Or like. This whole night, preferably. Maybe my whole existence, Samu’s an only child now, fuck him.”
Shouyou laughs, disbelieving. How had he not seen this before? It’s all clear now. “Why would I want to do that,” Shouyou laughs. “After all, Atsumu-san, I was about to confess to you.”
“Samu would do fine as the only child,” Atsumu insists, “he’s Ma’s favourite anyways—wait, what?”
“Atsumu-san,” Shouyou says. “I like you. Would you go on a date with me?”
The surprised whine Atsumu lets out is adorable, Shouyou thinks. He realizes he can say these things now, and does so. “How forward,” Atsumu mutters, red-faced.
“Is that a yes?” Shouyou teases.
Atsumu pulls his face out of his hands to nod wildly, suddenly serious. “If you thought me an' Kageyama were true love, let me show ya what true love actually looks like,” Atsumu declares, then promptly buries his face in his hands and curls up in a ball on the floor in his very expensive suit, right on the puddle of spilled wine.
They’re on the second floor of this banquet hall, but Shouyou feels like he’s on top of the world. How had he not seen this before? It’s the giddy feeling he’s felt unspool in him since they first met. Bokuto-san’s sixth sense was right: Atsumu would lie down in a puddle for him. Shouyou’s braved oceans, so he doesn’t need him to, but Atsumu wouldn’t even let Shouyou’s toe get wet. Shouyou decides here and now he would lie in puddles for Atsumu too—well, maybe not, since he could just carry them across the puddle instead.
Shouyou confesses, “Now I feel kind of silly.”
“You couldn't ever be silly,” Atsumu is quick to reassure, popping up from his roly-poly imitation to nod at Shouyou gravely, but when Shouyou shoots him an eyebrow he backs up a little, breaks into a nervous laugh. “Well, okay, maybe this was a tad far-fetched. I mean, ya really thought I’d spend six years pinin’ after Tobio-chan?”
Hinata steps back into Atsumu’s space and smiles cheekily. “To be fair, Atsumu-san, weren’t you pining after me for six years?”
Atsumu eeps! and Hinata laughs delightedly, taking Atsumu’s hands in his again.
“Atsumu-san.”
“Yes?”
“You know what I think would be even sillier? If we wait any longer.”
This time, he’s not at a crossroads in Miyagi and this time he’s not trying to prove himself to Kageyama, or the sun, or all of Japan; this time, he’s on a balcony in Tokyo and he’s with the man who’s believed in him from the very first game they ever stood on the same court for. Miya Atsumu’s eyes glow a molten gold from the flickering lights inside, and from Shouyou’s closeness, they look like tiny, twinkling stars.
He’d wish a miracle on one of them, but he doesn’t think he needs to.
When Shouyou leans in, six years coming, Atsumu meets him halfway.