Work Text:
When one thinks of amusement parks, games, rides, and generally a fun, happy time instantly come into mind. This, however, is decidedly not fun. This is a nightmare, a weaving of pure fear and terror, and Tobio swears if he ever manages to get out of here alive, he is so going to—
“Aaahh! Ahh! We’re gonna die! We’re gonna die!”
“Stop yelling, dumbass!” Tobio yells. He rubs his face with both of his palms when Hinata still wouldn’t stop screaming like a banshee. “Death is gonna be the least of your concern because I’m gonna kill you first if you don’t! Stop! Yelling!”
“That doesn’t even make any sense! And you’re yelling, too!” Hinata cries, serving Tobio a stink eye, or as stinky as he can possibly muster with his ashen face and trembling lips. Tobio just returns the glare a hundred-fold, and that seems to do the job of shutting the idiot up, as he looks away with an obnoxious huff.
But the sudden silence only gives way for Tobio to marinate in regret, recounting every action that had led to the disaster they’re currently in.
It was supposed to be a fun day in the amusement park, and it did start out that way. The first and last time Tobio had been to one was years ago, with Kazuyo-san and Miwa for his tenth birthday. It is one of his most treasured memories that is completely unrelated to volleyball, the only time he had fun without it.
But spending it with his friends (and yes, that includes that bastard Tsukishima, however mortifying that concept is), was admittedly fun, too. They were all together during the first hour, playing games and getting into every ride they could. But he and Hinata had been preoccupied with one-upping each other with a shooting game and before they knew it, their friends were out of sight.
It was Hinata’s idea to ride the Ferris wheel to look for them. Now they’re stuck in a cramped, glass-covered carriage for fifteen minutes.
“This is why you don’t get to have any dumbass ideas, you dumbass,” Tobio grumbles out loud.
Hinata bristles. “Wh-what?!”
“This is all your fault in the first place.”
The other boy lets out a disbelieving gasp. “You’re the one who said, ‘oh yeah. Good idea,’” he says in mock imitation of Tobio, flattening his hair as he does so.
He’s not wrong, but Tobio can’t give Hinata the satisfaction of being right, either, so he clicks his tongue and looks away.
Silence once again engulfs them.
Tobio gazes through the glass of the carriage to take his mind off of certain things that’s been circling his consciousness like incessant, annoying flies, things that shouldn’t be given permission to reside in his thoughts.
Getting stuck a hundred feet above the ground is bad enough as it is—getting stuck with the worst possible person just makes it a hundred times worse.
Tobio risks a sideways glance out of the corner of his eyes. Hinata has his arms around himself, as if he’s purposely trying to take up as little space as possible. Which is a weird concept to wrap around—as small as Hinata is, his larger-than-life presence could more than fill up a room, with that beaming smile and loud, cheery voice.
But Hinata is none of that presently. He looks quite pale, wide eyes darting around for every creak and squeak of the Ferris wheel carriage, small hands clenching and unclenching the sleeves of his sweater. The most frustrating thing of all: he wouldn’t stop chewing his lower lip, now looking red and swollen and just so ki—
Tobio has to give himself a few mental punches in the head to wrench his attention away from those lips and to clear his unsolicited thoughts.
See, this is why he absolutely shouldn’t be alone with this orange-haired gremlin. He always gives Tobio horrendous ideas.
“K-Kageyama?”
Tobio’s body temperature drops to subzero. Fuck, was he caught staring? Was he too obvious? He should run—wait, no, fuck , he’s trap, he’s done for—
“Wh-what?” He snaps, anger immediately acting as a reflex.
Hinata flinches, then he sighs, looking down on his feet. “Never mind.”
Something twinges in Tobio’s chest. God, why is he so… taken with this stupid idiot. “What is it?” he asks, cutting down his tone, just a little.
The other boy still has his eyes cast down, squirming. “Uhm…”
“Out with it, dumbass.”
Those round brown eyes squeezes tight as Hinata blurts out, “Canyouholdmyhands?”
Tobio sputters, “Wh-what?”
“Can you hold my hands, please!” Hinata yells, extending both of his hands like an offering.
Okay, either Tobio has completely lost his mind, or Hinata has.
He goes for the more convenient option.
“Are you crazy? No!” He whips his hands behind him, for good measure. “Why would I?”
“Because I’m scared and my hands are cold!” Hinata grouches, and for a second, he has every intent to fight and demand for it, like he always does, but then he deflates and slumps on his side of the carriage. “I-It’s fine. That was weird, anyway. Sorry.” He then proceeds to hug himself again, shrinking within his sweater.
Hinata has never looked so tiny and vulnerable.
Tobio’s mouth starts to open when the carriage suddenly sways and groans on its hinges. Hinata screams and Tobio is already lunging forward even before his mind could even process things, and his hands grab onto cold, clammy ones, fingers intertwining tightly.
“We’re gonna die! We’re gonna die, Kageyama!”
“Sh-shut up! That was just the wind!”
“I-I don’t want to die, Kageyama!” Hinata wails, tears pricking on the corners of his blown, shaky eyes. “I-I still have to be good at volleyball! I still have to beat you!”
Tobio has never seen Hinata this distressed before, or even this legitimately terrified. He’s always been a scaredy-cat, but never like this. Tobio shuffles closer, gripping their joined hands. “No one’s going to die, so stop screaming.” He gives another reassuring squeeze, and it might be instinct or reflex, but Hinata squeezes back. “I won’t let that happen.”
Hinata sniffs. He blinks his glossy, golden eyes at Tobio “R-really?”
Tobio nods. “Yeah.” He hears some commotion from below and he presses his face on the glass to have a look. “See, they’re doing something about it now.” He turns to face Hinata again. He could go in for a smile, but he figures that would only scare Hinata more than comfort him. “We’ll be out of here in no time, so just…think about something else.”
Hinata shakes his head frantically. “I-I can’t. There’s nothing in here that can distract me!” Then his gaze lands on their entwined hands. “Except, maybe…this.”
“Yeah, well…if that helps,” Tobio murmurs as he stares at their hands, too, before stalwartly looking away. If Hinata finds comfort in that, Tobio, on the contrary, needs a distraction of his own away from it.
He settles at looking over the glistening lake dotted with tiny boats shaped like swans and turtles at the distance, but all of his nerve endings seem to concentrate on the point of contact between them, feeling each ridge and bumps of those rough, calloused hands wrapping around his own. Yet, they’re also unbelievably soft, if that makes any sense. Hinata just seems to defy all rules of the universe, from his jumps to the feel of his hands.
They are a bit sweaty, though, which is kind of gross. But Hinata being gross is not an entirely alien concept to Tobio, so whatever.
“Your hands are really warm,” Hinata says suddenly in genuine awe, as if he doesn’t mean to say them out loud.
Tobio’s hands are not the only ones getting warm—he can feel the back of his neck and his ears prickle with heat. “And really big. And your fingers are super long.” Hinata adds, stoking the fire even more.
Tobio is half a mind to withdraw his hand and pocket them into safety, if only to keep them away from scrutinizing large eyes and to save himself from spontaneously combusting. But it does seem to calm Hinata, so it’s a risk he just has to endure.
He faces the other boy properly—the whole distract himself thing isn’t really working, anyway. “Obviously, dumbass,” he jibes, “I’m bigger than you everywhere.”
Hinata just nods, then he’s silent for a moment, before whispering, “Is this weird for you?”
“What, that I’m bigger?”
“No, stupid,” Hinata says with a roll of his eyes. “I meant, this.” He gestures at their hand, lifting them and letting it drop in the space between their knees.
“It’s only weird if you make it weird,” Tobio says, although he’s not really sure if he’s saying that to Hinata or himself. “You’re the one who asked for it.”
Hinata shrugs. “That’s different. I didn’t think you’d be up for it.” When Tobio doesn’t answer, Hinata sighs. “I-I mean, you normally do this kind of thing with…you know…” he trails, his pale cheeks quickly rising in color, eyes looking anywhere but at Tobio’s face.
Tobio frowns. “No, I don’t know.”
Amber eyes finally locking with blue ones, Hinata says in the softest voice Tobio has never heard him use before, “You do this kind of thing with the person you like.”
“I do like you.”
It must be the work of altitude and oxygen and all the science-y stuff Tobio never paid any attention to in class, but it’s the only logical explanation why his mouth decides to run off without his brain. He resists the urge to face-palm himself, hard enough to propel himself into the next dimension to spare him from the impending mortification.
Hinata, understandably, stares at Tobio like he’s grown an extra head, plus a tail. “You—like—what?!” he screeches, face and neck dousing in crimson red, and Tobio figures, he’s faring no better. “Y-you like me?!”
“I-I meant as a-a friend!” Tobio stammers, shouts, whatever. “As a friend and—and teammate! Dumbass!”
“I-I know that! I-It just surprised me!” Hinata shouts back, even as his face burns even deeper, redder than the sun settling behind the mountains.
Then he snickers, quickly turning into a full-on laugh.
“W-what? What’s funny?” Trying to sound demanding is hard when Tobio’s heart is lodged in his throat and with his entire body on fire.
Hinata snorts, then he’s smiling at Tobio, radiant and flushed and—
Beautiful.
Here, trapped in a cramped, musty enclosed glass a hundred feet up in the air, Hinata—his rival, his partner, and if it isn’t obvious enough, the guy he’s been crushing on for months, looks achingly beautiful.
“Well, that makes me happy, because I like you, too!” Hinata exclaims.
Tobio has never really understood the expression ‘on cloud nine high,’ but he’s quite sure this bursting feeling within his chest must be pretty damn close.
Then the beaming smile turns into a teasing smirk. “Even though you’re sometimes mean and violent and call me dumbass more than my own name.”
And Tobio can’t help it; he smirks right back.
“Dumbass.”
Their nonsensical argument of who likes who continues until the Ferris wheel starts to turn and move again, continuing even after their feet touch the ground, as they zigzag their way among the crowd in search of their friends.
With Hinata’s hand still clutched over his.