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Hinata's fifteen and then some when he meets Tsukishima, that beanpole of a human, for the first time. First expressions are often wrong, but in Tsukishima’s case, Hinata’s certain he’s just a jerk (and let’s be honest here: he’s not wrong, not really).
Tsukishima taunts his opponents.
He manages to find their buttons and pushes them so masterfully, Hinata can’t help but want to fight him – even if he knows he stands no chance in a battle of wits against this tall jerk.
*
Starting high school, Tsukishima thinks he has no high expectations for Karasuno – he wants to be part of a normal volleyball team. Winning some games and losing some. Doing just average.
He doesn’t expect a super intense captain, nor the King of the Court.
But least of all he expects to be bested by a shrimp of a human in a 3 to 3 match.
Hinata’s faster than anyone he’d been up against before.
Suddenly, he finds himself surrounded by the worst kind of humans: uselessly hot-blooded people.
Yet somehow, he doesn’t want to be left behind.
*
The summer he turns sixteen, Hinata sneaks into the training camp for the best, most promising first years in Miyagi.
Tsukishima's there. He got invited.
Hinata no longer hates him ferociously – or rather, he wonders if he ever did.
Sure, Tsukishima’s a jerk like no one else. He doesn’t miss a chance to mock Hinata. He calls Hinata out on his bad grades, his misperceptions, and most of all, laughs at Hinata whenever he gets a ball in his face (albeit, it happens less and less frequently as of late). Tsukishima’s intelligent, yet it takes an impossible amount of time and desperate begging to get Tsukishima to tutor anyone – and even when he finally agrees, he is doing it so unwillingly Hinata feels like throwing his notes in Tsukishima’s face, just to elicit some reaction from him other than mild discontent.
He’s like an antithesis of fun, and Hinata learned this word specifically so he can call Tsukishima out in reply to his usual mockery. No matter how reluctant Tsukishima appears to be, be it helping Hinata with his studies, doing extra practice, or going to a camp he’s been invited to, at the end of the day he always goes through with it (and Hinata can’t hate his guts, not really, not anymore).
It no longer surprises Hinata when, on the way home from Shiratorizawa (as Coach Washijo strictly forbade him from sleeping on campus), he catches himself thinking about Tsukishima. He wonders if Tsukishima eats his meals, or if he can sleep easily in the Shiratorizawa dorm. He wonders if all the boys sleep in the same room, like how they did during summer camp, or if they all got their own room (Shiratorizawa being fancy and all). He wonders if Tsukishima falls asleep with his headphones on, or if Koganegawa pokes him awake to ask him something.
The following day, Tsukishima walks up to him and asks to practice together during freetime, and Hinata can’t help but believe that Tsukishima may think about him, too (no matter how quickly Tsukishima denies it).
*
Tsukishima’s been breathing the air of this world for sixteen years and roughly one month when he has it. That moment .
Two months later, he witnesses it happen to someone else.
He’s so tired he doesn’t even notice that he’d already put his jacket on and he’s trying to pull a second one on top of his own by accident. He needs someone to point it out to him – and when he hears Daichi’s warning to Hinata to wear his jacket, he immediately realizes whose jacket he holds and why he struggled so much to get it on all the way over his arm.
He glances up. The sight of Hinata, staring mesmerized at the red marks on his arms left behind by his successful receive, wakes Tsukishima up immediately.
“Hey,” he says. “Hinata.”
The boy looks up, face red from victory and exertion (he looks almost as if he was blushing at Tsukishima). His glance, hazy and unfocused, settles on Tsukishima with a lag.
Be there.
“This is yours,” Tsukishima throws his jacket at him. It lands on Hinata’s head.
It’s Tsukishima whose face reddens for a reason unrelated to volleyball. Lucky for him, the jacket mercifully hides his blush from Hinata though, and the sound of his violently beating heart is covered up by Yamaguchi’s giggle.
*
When Hinata turns seventeen, he finds a small present in his changing room locker, wrapped hastily in a torn page of a notebook. “Don't expect much,” the accompanying note says in Tsukishima's neat handwriting. "Open it when you're alone."
A smile probes his lips as he sinks the gift into his pocket.
Later that afternoon Hinata slips away from their little study group, leaving Kageyama, Yamaguchi, Yachi and Tsukishima huddled close together, nose deep in Yachi’s notes preparing for the midterm. He walks past a few of the brass club members, waves at his friend from middle school, but his mind is somewhere else.
Hinata retreats into a bathroom stall, locking the door behind him with his heart throbbing painfully loudly in his chest. A present from Tsukishima, after all, is a present from Tsukishima . Sure, they are no longer on bad terms, not really. (Were they ever? Hinata barely remembers now. Some first impressions may be lasting; others get overwritten with time.) But Tsukishima is still Tsukishima. He is still that stingy bastard. He’s not someone Hinata would’ve expected to remember his birthday – let alone to give him a present.
Hinata sits on the closed toilet lid and digs the small package out of his pocket. He holds it up, inspects it. The gap between the clumsiness of the packaging and the neat letters of the accompanying message brings another smile on his face.
He unwraps it, carefully, with his breath held in. Tsukishima had warned him not to expect much – but when the sheer fact that Tsukishima remembered , and cared enough to get him something makes Hinata’s heart burst, he is at a point where he would be happy, moreover, elated to receive something as little as a used eraser.
From the crumpled up notebook page, a roll of bright orange finger tape appears. There’s a message, too, Hinata quickly notices: the inside of the paper used to wrap the tape in is filled with Tsukishima’s pretty, even letters.
“Now that you finally take blocking seriously, this might come in handy,” it reads. “This way you don’t have to borrow from Inuoka or Haiba or whomever we have our next practice match with.”
Hinata stifles the giggle probing his throat, shuffling both the letter and his present back to his pocket. He glides out of the stall with a song on his lips, mumbling makeshift lyrics as he washes his hands, uncaring of the surprised faces of two first years.
He has a bounce to his steps as he walks back and a smile on his face as he returns to the classroom where his friends sit at two desks pulled together, deep in discussion over some mathematical problem.
“You’re finally back,” Kageyama greets him. “Took your sweet time.”
“Sorry, I had important business to take care of,” Hinata replies, settling in his chair between Kageyama and Yachi.
As he sits, he catches Tsukishima’s quizzical glance and he flashes his brightest grin at him. Tsukishima casts his gaze away and pushes his glasses higher up his nose.
“Now then,” he clears his throat, “can we continue?”
“I can’t wait to be educated by the mighty Tsukishima!” Hinata exclaims playfully. “That reminds me,” he continues as he leans over the desk and into Tsukishima’s headspace. He feels giddy on the inside, a little evil, even, but he has to – even if it means that Tsukishima won’t teach him anymore – just this time, tease him a little. “Kenma helped me with my English homework. Would you check it for me later?”
“Why would I do that?” Tsukishima grimaces, lifting his water bottle to his mouth.
“I don’t know,” Hinata muses, watching him with a grin on his face, “so I don’t have to ask people from other schools?”
Tsukishima chokes on his drink.
*
A week before Tsukishima’s seventeenth birthday, an origami dinosaur greets him on top of his desk when he arrives at school. It’s a little crooked, very yellow, and it has a big ‘V’ on its side. When Tsukishima asks around, the class rep, who always arrives earlier than it would be reasonable, tells him that a short, red-haired boy left it. Tsukishima nods and thanks the rep, leaving her vicinity before she could drag him into some useless class activity.
He returns to his desk, looking at the little guy. It doesn’t actually resemble a Tyrannosaurus Rex, but an attempt has definitely been made. (And it makes Tsukishima smile. Oh, he has difficulty stopping himself from grinning, but he doesn’t want his classmates to know that he is capable of emotions, that would deeply hurt his image.)
He finds a second one right as he returns to the classroom from lunch break, and a third in his shoe locker on the way home. The yellow guy is accompanied by a red one with an ‘E’ and a green one with an ‘R’ on their sides in Tsukishima’s bag on the way home.
The next day he is greeted by a tall boy, folded out of bright pink paper, with a tiny, wobbly ‘Y’ on its neck, and later in the afternoon, he finds an orange Stegosaurus with its unique upright plates glued on from some shiny foil and an ‘H’ written on its stomach.
The third origami that day is hidden in his locker in the volleyball club’s clubroom. It looks like a crane. It’s a pale shade of blue. It has an ‘A’ written on it, and next to it lays a tiny piece of paper torn out of a notebook. “I know it looks like a crane, but this is a pterodactyl” it reads.
Tsukishima snorts just as Hinata walks past him, already fully changed.
“Hey,” Tsukishima calls out after him before he could think it through.
Hinata stops, turns on his heels, and looks at him innocently. “Tsukishima? You need something?”
“Yeah,” Tsukishima says. (He has so many questions, like how Hinata knew that he likes dinosaurs, or what those letters mean – but he really, really doesn’t want to ask any of those questions.)
“What is it?” Hinata presses on.
“How do you know what a pterodactyl is?”
“I searched it.”
“Why?”
“Just because.”
“Hm.”
“Is that all?” Hinata asks. “Don’t you want to tell me to stop because it’s annoying or anything?”
“Would you stop if I asked?” Tsukishima asks back. “Wait, don’t answer. I don’t want you to stop. It’s… kind of interesting.”
He watches a series of emotions cross Hinata’s face in quick succession: surprise, relief, happiness.
“I’m glad,” Hinata says. “Look forward to the rest.”
“I will,” Tsukishima replies.
(And he does. He starts waking up earlier, just so he can scoop up his morning trophy origami a few minutes earlier.)
As the days go by, the line of paper dinosaurs gets longer and longer on his desk. They also get sharper, more expertly done, with fewer stray folds and straighter legs. Some even stand on their own. The ‘VERYHA’ is soon followed by two ‘P’s and another ‘Y’, and Tsukishima realizes their meaning on the third day when he finds a tiny purple dino with the letter ‘B’ written on it.
(He’s touched. Really. Especially when he does the math and realizes that ‘Very Happy Birthday’ has exactly seventeen letters in it.)
He keeps his discovery to himself, but he finds himself watching Hinata more often, eyes forgotten on the sunny orange hair, the continuously broadening shoulders, the round cheeks; lost in the warm brown eyes of Hinata. He wonders, holding Hinata’s gaze across the net, just how much thought really went into his present.
He holds onto his questions until the last day. It’s hard. He has never been so curious and left without answers for so long – but he had decided to hold on and wait for the last dinosaur to appear before he asks them.
On the morning of his seventeenth birthday when he rolls out of bed, sixteen dinosaurs stand lined up on his desk. His lips curl up into a smile without him noticing, and the smile stays on his face while he showers and dresses. He is about to go down to have breakfast when the bell to the front door rings.
“Kei!” he hears his mom shout from downstairs. “A friend of yours is here to pick you up!”
Tsukishima walks down the stairs confused as to why his mom announced Yamaguchi as a friend of his – only for his jaw to drop literally when he spots Hinata at the entrance.
“Hinata?” he asks instead of a greeting.
“Hi,” Hinata waves awkwardly. His hair stands up at all angles, his nose is red, tinted with the chill of the early morning wind. He smiles nervously, and Tsukishima’s stomach somersaults.
“What brings you here?” he asks.
“I… I. Um. Take it,” Hinata says, holding out a paper bag.
Tsukishima walks up to him and takes the bag, peeking inside. Instead of the seventeenth dinosaur he expects, he finds a bar of strawberry chocolate inside.
“There’s been a little accident,” Hinata clears his throat. “Natsu, my little sister, fell and crushed the last origami. I… I will redo it today after school. And… I asked Yamaguchi what you liked. He said your favorites are strawberry shortcakes, but those seemed super difficult to make and I didn’t have enough time to master it, so… I hope you like the chocolate. It’s strawberry flavor.”
Tsukishima looks at the boy standing in his doorstep with windblown hair and dark circles around his eyes, smiling at him hopefully. “It’s my favorite,” he says and watches Hinata’s expression change: tension leaving his shoulders and a joyful smile spreading across his face.
“I’m glad!” Hinata says.
“Why dinosaurs though?” Tsukishima asks finally.
“Oh, that,” Hinata laughs bashfully. “I saw you had a dino keychain, so I asked Yamaguchi. He told me you wanted to be an archeologist. That’s so cool!” Hinata’s eyes sparkle. “My sister, Natsu, got really into origami lately, and has been asking me to do all kinds of animals for her, so I thought, I would make you origami dinosaurs. They’re harder to make than you would guess! There are not many folding patterns for dinosaurs online, but I wanted to make something unique for every day, and then I thought, you turn seventeen so why not make seventeen?”
“And that’s where the message came from? The Very Happy Birthday?” Tsukishima asks.
“You found it out!” Hinata replies, eyes wide in surprise. “Certainly, you are Tsukishima after all.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, what else? You’re super intelligent!” Hinata beams up at him.
Tsukishima finds uselessly hot-blooded people irritating. But Hinata is not uselessly hot-blooded. He’s more determined than anyone Tsukishima knows, and he is not afraid to put in work when necessary. He may have been hot-headed once to the point where he sneaked into a training camp he had not been invited to (and Tsukishima might have nightmares about it to this day), but he was not afraid to humble himself and took pride in becoming a ball boy. He’s driven, passionate, hard-working. He’s fearless. He has a cheeky side to him, too (not that Tsukishima complains), but he can be humble and considerate when he has to.
Most of all, he’s Hinata. And so – slowly, grudgingly, irreversibly – Tsukishima falls for him.
*
Hinata's eighteen when he discovers the inherent eroticism of Tsukishima pushing up his glasses on his nose. He does so using his middle finger as if he wanted to flip the whole world off (and knowing Tsukishima it very well might be a possibility), and it makes Hinata tremble to his core. He finds his eyes lingering on Tsukishima’s taped fingers, wondering how they would feel on his skin. His throat goes dry when Tsukishima lifts his water bottle to his lips and gulps slowly with his Adam’s apple bobbing. He follows the descent of a droplet of water down Tsukishima’s chin, leaving a shiny wet trail behind, and dreams about chasing it with his lips.
“You’re staring,” Tsukishima tells him one day, casually, walking up to his side in the gym.
“I am,” Hinata replies, holding his gaze. “Does it bother you?”
Tsukishima squints at him, but there is no distrust in his eyes. “Not really. Just thought I’d let you know that you’re doing it very obviously.”
“Oh, I see,” Hinata says, and he flashes a smile at Tsukishima. “Thanks for letting me know.”
Tsukishima volunteers the both of them for gym cleaning duty (Yamaguchi, though surprised, doesn’t say a thing) and sends the underclassmen home. They start mopping the gym from opposite ends, working in silence.
Hinata stops once, looking up, but Tsukishima ignores his presence entirely. He leans back against the mop (moping a little, pun not intended), continuing the cleaning with renewed energy.
They meet in the middle, mops bumping into each other.
Hinata gives a pointed look at Tsukishima’s mop when a hand reaches out for him, tipping his chin upward, lips capturing his pout.
Hinata kisses back, swaying dangerously off his feet, and he clings onto his mop like a drowning man to driftwood.
(He’s not entirely sure whether Tsukishima’s hand on the small of his back is warranted – he doubts he would really fall; not literally at least.)
*
Tsukishima’s eighteen when he asks Hinata if they can go home together for the first time.
They link pinkies on the way.
Hinata pushes his bicycle over his feet at least three times, having horrible control over it with one hand only, but he refuses to let go of Tsukishima’s hand.
(It’s disgusting really, just how happy they are.)
*
Hinata’s nineteen when he boards a plane to Brazil.
He laughs when he hugs Yachi and Yamaguchi goodbye. (Both of them are sobbing.)
Tsukishima stands off to the side with his usual blank expression. Hinata can read him, still, better than anyone.
“I’ll be back, you know,” he says.
“If you think I’ll be waiting for you–!” Tsukishima starts, voice hushed but irritated.
“I will,” Hinata cuts in. “And I’ll get you the best souvenir when I come back.”
*
Tsukishima doesn’t particularly hate university.
What he hates is the lack of the soft metal sound of a bicycle pulled by his side.
*
It’s not until he loses the wallet his sister gave him that homesickness finds Hinata, but once it reaches him it crashes down on him with the power of a thousand Ushijima serves. It’s not a wallet he lost, but his sister’s sentiments, her careful deliberation and final choice of design, her weeks-long effort collecting the money she had spent on the wallet, and her feelings she had poured into the gift. Hinata is reminded of the things he left behind – the intangible ones hurting the most: a glance, a smile, the feeling of a touch. He realizes that the wallet he lost served him as a tiny raft of home in a sea of foreign; now that it’s gone, he sinks. He is reaching the bottom, ready to drown when he meets Oikawa.
He speaks to someone without a language barrier or a computer screen standing between them for the first time in months. The familiar face, the memory of their rivalry turning into playful jabs, the food they eat together, the sunshine they play under – Oikawa is no swimming board, but he becomes the bubble of air that Hinata needs.
(Later, once they’ve said their goodbyes, he has a hunch, faint but certain, that he helped Oikawa just as much as he helped him.)
Looking after the tall figure pulling a small suitcase, Hinata smiles.
He takes a deep breath and his lungs fill with air.
He opens his eyes, taking a good look at his surroundings. Rio looks vibrant under the scorching sun, lively, noisy, colorful.
Setbacks are part of the journey.
It’s the traveler’s responsibility to find ways to overcome them.
And if something, Hinata thrives on challenges. One step after the other, he learns how to swim.
*
Kyoutani Kentarou is a surprisingly easy person to get along with, Tsukishima finds. He’s good to have around for blocking practice, too. His sharp-angle shots are tricky as hell.
Tsukishima wipes the sweat off his forehead after practice when Kyoutani finds him. The Aoba Jousai alumnus nods at him approvingly and compliments his last block. Tsukishima doesn’t feel the need to compliment Kyoutani’s serves in return (even though he had watched them closely, trying to learn from Kyoutani’s technique).
“Tryouts are next week, you know,” Kyoutani says then. Tsukishima can tell that he’s trying to sound casual. He mostly sounds like a kid presenting in front of a class, though.
“Hn,” Tsukishima says. “Good luck.”
“You should come too,” Kyoutani continues, but as their eyes meet, he retreats a little. “Just sayin’,” he adds. “I think you’re too good to stay at an amateur level forever.”
Tsukishima watches Kyoutani, thinking back to how he was when they’d first met. He’s no longer the mad dog he had faced off at Interhigh who had selfishly claimed all tosses that had gone up; though he still has terrible hairstyles and a resting death glare but overall he has mellowed out and turned into a quite agreeable teammate to have.
Tsukishima intends to change, too.
“Alright,” he replies. “I’ll try to go if I have time.”
Be more honest. With himself. And with those who are important.
*
It’s morning in Rio when Hinata’s phone rings. When he sees the caller, who has a brand new profile picture, looking into the distance by some water, maybe the sea (definitely a photo taken by Yamaguchi), Hinata thinks he is hallucinating.
“Tsukishima?” he accepts the call.
“Good morning,” comes the familiar voice from the other end of the line. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No,” Hinata replies, glancing at his watch. “I’ve been up for two hours now.”
“It’s 7:30 in the morning, isn’t it?” Tsukishima asks back. His audible surprise and disbelief casts a smile on Hinata’s lips.
“It is!” he replies with a laugh.
He missed Tsukishima’s voice. He missed it so much.
They never really argued over him coming to Brazil. They didn’t part on bad terms, either – Tsukishima’s stinginess was more to hide how worried he had been than anything else. Yet they called each other so rarely. (Probably to feel less lonely, Hinata realizes, as his heart rushes to reply to the sound of Tsukishima’s voice.)
“You’re truly a monster,” Tsukishima replies with a chuckle.
“It’s called a healthy lifestyle, Tsukishima. You could try it sometime.”
“There’s nothing healthy about waking up at 5… anyway, that’s not why I called.” There is a pause in the call; Hinata can hear the shaky breath Tsukishima takes, followed by a sigh. “Feliz aniversário, Hinata.”
“Your accent’s great,” is the first thing that comes out of Hinata’s mouth, followed by a laugh bubbling up from the depth of his heart.
“Laughing at me?”
“I’m just happy to hear your voice.”
“Yeah,” he hears Tsukishima. “Likewise.”
*
Tsukishima’s twenty-one years old, and he’s celebrating his birthday with his university friends (yes, they exist).
(Yamaguchi and Yachi held him a small party a few days prior where Yachi got way too drunk and Yamaguchi had to take her home halfway, much to Tsukishima’s relief as the topic of their conversation had been the soon-returning Hinata for the last half an hour or so.)
Tsukishima’s twenty-one and he has his life together. He has an apartment – tiny but cozy and close to campus. He can afford the rent: he has an internship at the Sendai Museum – not anything world-changing but a decent place. He even has a team now, having joined the second division Sendai Frogs.
He has his life together. He needs no reminders that he could have more.
And yet it arrives, in the form of a direct message.
Hinata: Hey check this out
The preview pops up on his lock screen. (A blessing, really. He doesn’t want Hinata to see that he’d read his messages, not instantly at least.)
Hinata: I thought you’d like this, what do you say?
The temptation is big.
He doesn’t open the message. (Not in front of others.)
(And once he does, he wishes he could unsee the violently pink shirt Hinata found.)
*
When Hinata comes home, Yamaguchi comes to the airport to greet him. Tsukishima doesn’t, but he wouldn’t be Tsukishima if he threw everything away and came running into Hinata’s arms. (He’s never been honest like that.)
(Tsukishima’s never been honest, not with himself and definitely not with the people around him, but that doesn’t mean that those close to him can’t read him like an open book. Just as Yamaguchi can sense his pain and Yachi can see his hidden excitement, Hinata can read between the lines and see behind the facade Tsukishima so carefully maintains.)
Hinata doesn’t even mind it. There’s a special kind of sweetness in waiting once the finish line is in sight. Knowing that Tsukishima is within driving distance makes his heart ache in a special way, and he feels the same kind of excited giddiness he felt when he first realized that his feelings were requited.
Yet, nothing can prepare him for the sight that greets him at his family home. As his mom and Natsu suffocate him in a tight hug from both sides, he sees a tall figure standing in the entrance, shifting his weight from one leg to the other awkwardly.
As their eyes meet, Tsukishima doesn’t cast his gaze away.
He smiles.
“I’ll help with the luggage,” Tsukishima offers.
“Leave it to me!” Natsu shrieks excitedly and she storms off like a hurricane. She is followed by their mom who scolds her lovingly about being too intense. Outside, Yamaguchi laughs.
Hinata is left alone with Tsukishima in the entranceway.
“You sure got tanned,” Tsukishima starts, a smile wobbly on his lips as if he fought a losing fight against a full-blown grin.
“And you… did you grow even taller?”
“I might have,” Tsukishima laughs.
“I heard you joined a team.”
“You too. First division, too.”
“Gotta beat Kageyama.”
“Don’t you think I’ll be left behind,” Tsukishima says. “Not anymore.”
Hinata beams at him with all the feelings he has accumulated throughout the years.
“I’m home,” he says.
Tsukishima opens his arms wide in reply. “Welcome home.”
Bonus things I cut out because it’s really not necessary for this thing to be so long:
– after Tsukki chokes on his drink –
In an instant, chaos erupts. Tsukishima bursts out in a fit of coughs, splattering his water from the bottle over the notes. Yamaguchi jumps up to help while Kageyama, trying to be helpful, pats Tsukishima’s back forcefully. Hinata jumps up, helping Yachi evacuate their notes and notebooks.
They manage to save most of their things, mostly because Tsukishima was careful enough (even in a moment when he was fighting for his life) to spill most of his water away from their desk and because Yamaguchi was fast taking the bottle away from him.
“I can look at it,” Yachi says once the commotion is over. “Your English homework.”
“I will,” Tsukishima says between the aftercoughs.
His voice is so weak, apart from Hinata only Yachi catches it – and she is tactful enough not to bring it up (how come Tsukishima, of all people, volunteers for something, though?)
– after Hinata reveals his souvenir for Tsukki –
Tsukishima: Don’t you dare
Hinata: Too late
Tsukishima: No
Tsukishima: Feel free to leave it in Rio
Hinata: How could I leave the most important present?
Tsukishima: Dumbass
Tsukishima looks up from his phone, reminding himself of his promise. Be more honest.
Tsukishima: I miss you