Chapter Text
Hinata Shoyo was blessed, or cursed like he would say when he would be older, with the talent of connecting with a variety of people and making friends really easily by being able to put himself in other people's shoes.
He was also carrying a really big heart, capable of loving a lot.
Shoyo's first love was volleyball: he fallen for it when he saw the Little Giant on TV and he never stopped.
Shoyo’s second love was the one that hurted the most.
He realized he was in love with his best friends in his second year of High school but Kageyama only had space in his heart for volleyball. And that was fine for him. They got time and he wanted to concentrate on volleyball too, he was so behind him... Hinata was being left behind by everyone if he didn't train enough. He learned that. He had to take proprer care of himself first.
He didn't understand really how it happened but Shoyo and Yachi kind of dated for a month, the summer between their second and the third year. They were both cligying to each other while deciding what to do with their life.
It lasted until a child caught them almost kissing during a festival, they looked at each other and started laughing and never stopped for a while when they realized what they were doing. That wasn't really the right thing for them. They stayed friends, but they were never really a couple and nobody never knew about it.
The third year went so fast, he didn't even had time to worry to much about his romantic feelings while planning what to do after high school. Not that his feelings for Tobio really chaged in the meantime.
He wasn't surprised when Kageyama managed to enter the V-league pretty soon after graduation. He was always so ahead of him...
It took him a year to prepare himself to go to the other side of the world. He was grateful for the help he recieved, especially Kenma’s.
Kenma was one of the few people that Hinata never really managed to understand. He felt like there was something there that was constantly hidden out of reach, like when you look a cat straight in the eyes and you can’t figure out what it’s going on in its mind.
When Kozume gave him his clothes with his brand on them... when they said their goodbyes before he left for Rio... he briefly though that maybe Kenma was hiding is feeling for him, but it couln’t be that, right?
For the first time in years he felt really alone when he was in Rio.
The first few weeks were terrible. He was so scared and lost. Hinata was still struggling to learn portugese, to comunicate with his new room mate that seemed not really interested in making a new friend, to keep the job he got to pay everything... Until he met Oikawa.
He would never had tought to meet the Great King on the other side of the world, but there they were, there the played... there they spent a week together and ended up knowing each other more than ho would have ever thought. The setter confessed that he was in a tight spot too, but that thanks to those games, to Hinata, he his love for volleyball came back even stronger.
Before he realized, Shoyo had fallen for the Great King...no, for Oikawa-san.
They dated, after each night spent playing beach volley, Shoyo showing Oikawa the best places he found to eat. It was like redescovering Rio completly.
Oikawa saved him.
But whatever happened between them there, ended there too. When for the first time Tooru called him by his name, and not he usual nickname, Shoyo knew that he putting and end to whatever they had.
Just like that, they were rivals promising to beat eachother again.
They kept in touch, with short messages, silly flirting with one another, both knowing the heart of the other belogend to someone else.
Hinata hadn’t forgotten Kageyama. He could not do that. He was his most great rival and his beloved best friend, even if they weren’t talking a lot lately... and Shoyo was pretty sure something was up. He saw that in the group chat with Yachi, Tsukishima and Yamaguchi too. He couln’t really put a name on it, but something was different.
Two years passed, too fast and too slowly at the same time.
Hinata was back in Japan.
The day he was waiting for since he lost his first game in the middle school volley tournament was finally here: he got to play against Kageyama again, not only that, he was so lucky to play against Hoshiumi and Ushijima too.
He couldn’t even thing about his feelings for him, because volleyball came first for both of them, they were both waiting for it. There was no place for anything else.
He was so so so happy when he won. He could have screamed at him that he loved him right there in the center of the court.
But he didn’t, he knew how to control himself now. Ha was still ecstatic.
He wasn’t ready for what came next.
When they both managed to get reunited whit their ex team member form Karasuno, it hitted him. As soon as Hinata saw Kageyama and Tsukishima talking to each other he understood what was that thing he was missing in the group chats. In Rio he saw a lot of couple going around the beach, he knew how to spot one.
They were together.
That explanied a lot: why Kageyama looked more relaxed, why Tsukishima had that kind of soft expression on his face looking at the setter, why sometime it seemed like they were talking another language in the chat, some of the things that Yamaguchi said to him...
And just like that, part of Hinata heart shattered. He had been so stupid to think he had time, to hope that Kageyama would keep on loving just volleyball.
He acted like nothing happened. They spent the evening together and went their separate ways. They kept in touch, like adults do, seeing each other when they could, going to watch each other games, things like that.
It took months to Hinata to get over it, but, thanks to his friends and his first true love, volleyball, he did it.
Ironically, the two people that helped Hinata the most where the one next in line to break his heart and the one he kept rejecting, trying to save him from suffering too: Oikawa Tooru and Miya Atsumu.
Atsumu confessed to Shoyo less than a month after the Black Jackals vs Adlers game. It was messy and rushed, Hinata listened to him ‘til the end, but it was really too soon. Shoyo told Atsumu that he liked him, that was true, but he was trying to get over someone and he didn’t want to use Atsumu to do that. If he was willing to give him another change when the time was right, Hinata would have accpeted that. He didn’t want Miya to wait for him, but he did.
He did even when Hinata heart got broken for the second time.