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leaving hardly hurts at all (i'm sorry that i never call)
Silence permeates the air between them, absorbing itself into Kageyama’s jacket like spilled water, sending ice-cold shivers down the length of his spine. He wants to shatter that silence, like shoving a fist through a paper-thin sheet of glass, but all the things he wants so badly to say sit at the tip of his tongue, almost ready to be said until he swallows them back down again. Hinata is blissfully unaware of the roiling tension stirring in the pit of Kageyama’s stomach, and Kageyama can see the boy’s fingers curl a bit tighter around the handlebars of his bike as a car goes past.
Kageyama clears his throat, offering up a few coughs afterward when he tries to speak and his voice is too raspy to even come out. Hinata’s head turns towards him, cocking to one side the tiniest bit, reminding Kageyama of a confused puppy.
“Were you gonna say something?” Hinata asks, a raise of his left eyebrow accompanying the words.
Kageyama wants to shake his head, brush it off, act like there are no words waiting to be said, evaporating behind his teeth. He doesn’t. (He wants to act like he hasn’t been hopelessly in love with his best friend for the past two years, and he at least succeeds at that.)
“Uh, actually…” His voice trails off, and he clears his throat two more times, and he can see the smile Hinata is trying to bite back, the cheeky little smirk that shows more in his eyes than on his lips. Kageyama throws a gentle punch onto Hinata’s arm, and grumbles, “I can see you trying not to laugh, shut up.”
“What do you mean, shut up? I didn’t even say anything!” The silence swirls between them again, curling in tendrils around their throats like vines of sentient fog. Hinata stops walking where the corner of the road ends and a crosswalk stretches ahead, the tires of his bike making a small screeching noise against the concrete of the sidewalk for a split second. “Seriously, though, what’s up?”
Kageyama wants to say the words, he really does, but each time he opens his mouth, it feels like he’s just swallowed four mouthfuls of sand, grating at the back of his throat and holding back what he wants to let out. He clears his throat a total of six times before he finally manages to get something out, and he can see Hinata barely managing to hold back another cheeky giggle. “Uh...so...you know how we’re going to different colleges?”
Hinata nods. “Yeah, duh . What does that have to do with anything?”
“I just…” The words feel like sand again, and he swallows the feeling back. He knows if he doesn’t say this now while he still has some semblance of courage, he’ll never say it, and that’ll just add to his ever-growing pile of regrets that looms behind him all the time, casting a shadow he can never step out of. “I just wanted you to know that, uh, as much as I’ll probably suck at consistently keeping in touch, I’ll always…” He clears his throat again, and Hinata quirks up a single expectant eyebrow.
“You’ll always…?”
“I’ll always care about you, and you can always come to me if you need anything.”
A smile breaks across Hinata’s face like the sun breaking over the horizon in the morning, and he gently slaps Kageyama’s shoulder with one hand. “Aww, you sap!”
“Shut up , dumbass!” Hinata just laughs, erratic giggling bouncing through the air as he crosses the street without Kageyama, leaving the taller boy to stand on the sidewalk and catch up with his own thoughts before he breaks into a run to catch up with his best friend. Hinata’s laugh sounds like sunshine, like rays of sunshine steeped into a cup of tea with sweet lavender honey stirred in, and Kageyama thinks if there’s one thing he’s going to miss the most when he leaves, it’ll be that laugh.
I love you , he wants to say. But the words lodge at the back of his throat with a sharp stabbing pain, and it feels like he’s just tried and failed to swallow a sword. He’d always thought leaving home for college would hardly hurt at all, but he’s starting to think the Kageyama of the past was a fucking idiot for thinking that.
He never calls. He’s aware of that, and yet every time he actually has time to call Hinata, something stops him. Something holds him back, and he wants to say he’s not quite sure what it is, but he knows damn well that’s a lie. He knows exactly what stops him from hitting that call button. He’s scared. He doesn’t even want to admit it, not even to himself, but he’s scared.
In theory, he knows his fears are irrational, that Hinata can’t have changed drastically enough in the past few months for anything to have changed between them, that he can’t have changed enough for Hinata to suddenly hate him now. But the fears still stir themselves up in his stomach until he’s curled up in bed, waves of nausea racking his body over and over again, and he thinks that now he understands why Hinata always needed to use the bathroom before their games.
He should call. He knows he should. If anything, never calling would be the one thing to turn those irrational fears rational, to make them come true the way he hopes they won’t. Kageyama knows this. At least, in theory. In practice, however, he’s just terrified, terrified right to his core, right down to the marrow of his bones, terrified that things will be different.
His phone rings. It’s not Hinata. He hates the way that fact releases a breath of relief from his lungs, feels horrible about it. It is Kuroo, however, and Kageyama genuinely doesn’t even remember giving the guy his number, but he stretches an arm out to answer and puts Kuroo on speaker.
“Hey, Kageyama! What’s shakin’?”
“ You called me .”
“Yeah, and I wanna know what’s shakin’. So, tell me, what’s shakin’?”
“Absolutely nothing, Kuroo.” Kageyama tosses his phone onto his bed, following the device in a well-executed belly flop.
“Aw, come on, there’s gotta be something .” Kuroo almost sounds exasperated. Either that or he sounds bored. Kageyama has never been the best at reading the tone of voices.
Kageyama probably sounds bored out of his mind himself as he replies, “I promise you, there is nothing , Kuroo. All I do is study, play volleyball, and sleep. It’s a very boring cycle.”
“Wait, wait, wait, so you mean to tell me you don’t do anything else?”
Kageyama rolls his eyes, and moves just far enough away from the receiver that it won’t pick up his tiny sigh. “I do nothing, Kuroo. I’m much less interesting than I come across, I know.”
“Hey! I can tell that was sarcasm!”
Kageyama can hear Kenma’s voice, very faintly, drift through the speaker. “Of course it was sarcasm, Kuroo. People are boring.”
Kuroo grumbles something under his breath that Kageyama doesn’t catch, and asks a question that catches Kageyama completely off guard. “How’s Hinata doing? I’m assuming you talk to him a lot, ‘cause you know, attached at the hip and all.”
Attached at the hip? Seriously? “Uhh...actually...I haven’t spoken to him at all since, like...the day I got to college. I called him on the day I moved into my dorm, and we haven’t spoken since. Not on the phone, at least, and I haven’t texted him in at least a month.”
Kuroo stays silent on the other end of the line, and the lack of response drags on for so long Kageyama starts to get nervous. The silence is broken when Kuroo, very obviously addressing Kenma, calls out, “Hey, Kenma, have you spoken to Hinata recently?”
Kageyama can’t hear Kenma’s response. This phone call is starting to feel a lot like an intervention, and Kageyama is confused as all hell because since when were he and Kuroo any type of close? He knows Kenma and Kuroo are close, and he also knows Kenma and Hinata are close, and he knows this train of thought is irrational too, but what if Hinata told Kenma that he wasn’t getting any calls from Kageyama, and then Kenma told Kuroo, and then…
“Hey, Kageyama, you still there?”
“I- Oh, uh, yeah, sorry. Did you say something?”
“Kenma said Hinata has been pretty busy lately, but...why haven’t you spoken to him at all?”
Kageyama wants to tell someone. He wants to tell someone so badly, wants to lift the tiniest bit of the weight resting on his shoulders, express to someone that he’s never been good at virtual communication, that’s he’s worse at it when it comes to Hinata because it feels wrong when he can’t feel his presence within reach of his fingertips. That he’s terrified to call Hinata because it’s been a while, and what if that while is long enough for the change he’s so scared of to have happened? He wants to tell someone, he’s just not sure if he wants that someone to be former Nekoma captain, Kuroo Tetsurou.
He’s not sure. But...it’s better that it be Kuroo, someone trustworthy, who Kageyama knows will only tell Kenma, who Kageyama knows won’t say a word to Hinata. It’s better for it to be Kuroo (and by default, Kenma) than someone else. So he breathes, in through his nose, out through his mouth, the words he wants to say dripping from the roof of his mouth onto his tongue like acid, and speaks.
“I’ll be honest, I’m fucking scared.”
will you call me still (just to hear my voice?)
Kageyama traces the line that a raindrop has left down his dorm room window with the tip of one finger, debating whether or not he should call Hinata. It’s been a week since his conversation with Kuroo (and by default, Kenma), and he knows he really should call Hinata, ask him how he’s been, what he’s been up to, and pointedly avoid asking whether or not he’s missed hearing Kageyama’s voice as much as Kageyama has missed hearing his. He knows he should, but there’s still a part of him, deep down in the pit of his stomach where Tartarus is tucked away, where that fear still resides, bubbling like molten lava getting ready to spray up out of his mouth in a perfect eruption. That fear is still there, still boiling, still prominent, sitting pretty at the forefront of his mind.
He wants to call Hinata in theory, but in practice...every time he navigates to Hinata’s contact, the call button is right there, begging for the minuscule touch of his finger that it needs, and yet, he can never do it.
He focuses on the rain again, cutting off his train of thought before it can create an innumerable amount of forks in the rails designed to get him lost inside his own mind, tracing the forks of the water trails instead. His phone rings. He hates himself for hoping it’s Kuroo again, but his hopes are misplaced this time. It’s Hinata.
He can feel his whole body freeze in terror he knows he shouldn’t be feeling, the blood flowing through his veins turning to ice water, the saliva in his mouth burning so hot he feels like an engine that’s gone without coolant for too long. He has to answer. He knows he does. He can’t just hang up and send Hinata an emotionless text in two hours saying nothing more than Sorry I missed your call, I was busy . What if this is Hinata making good on the half-promise Kageyama had made to him at that corner right before the crosswalk?
He answers, holding his breath until Hinata says something, his voice bursting through the speakers in an explosion of the liquid sunshine that that sound is sculpted from. “Hey, Kags? You there?”
The nickname makes Kageyama’s stomach flip, and he curses it for learning to do acrobatics on command at the sound of Hinata’s voice. “Yeah, sorry. Hi.”
“It’s been, like, forever ! How’s college going for you?”
“Uh...pretty busy, honestly. I haven’t caught a break since the second day of class.” Kageyama chuckles, the sound dry and low, scratching at his throat like he’s swallowed sand again, and he hates the way that already, their flow of conversation has turned awkward. He pictures the sand in his throat sliding down into an hourglass, the time that he and Hinata have before their bond is unsalvageable slowly slipping away, grain by grain of dismal beige sand.
“What about you? I heard from Kenma that you’ve been busy too.”
Hinata gasps, and if his voice weren’t so easy for Kageyama to read, he would completely miss the fake-offended tone the gasp holds tight in its hands. “You’ve been talking to Kenma , and not me ? I thought we were best friends, Kageyama!”
Kageyama laughs, less scratchy this time, louder, lighter, and it feels better in his throat. Less like sand, and more like chamomile tea. Soothing, rather than grating. “Technically, I was talking to Kuroo, but you know if you talk to one of them, you’re talking to both.”
Hearing Hinata laugh at the joke that wasn’t even really a joke makes Kageyama’s heart jump a lot higher in his chest than he’s used to, and he supposes distance really does make the heart grow fonder. Hinata’s laugh sounds just the same as always, sunshine giggles dappled across golden fields in the spring, gentle warmth brushed across honeyed skin, a cool breeze just barely touching its fingertips to the surface of the world before picking itself back up into the sky again.
It sounds like spring. Late spring, melting into summer, and Kageyama doesn’t think he’s ever loved a sound more. Hinata says, “Hey, Kags, why don’t you tell me a story or something? I called just to hear your voice, you know,” and Kageyama falls even further, letting himself be dipped into the River Styx in that Tartarus full of fear in the pit of his stomach. Hinata’s voice makes him feel immortal sometimes, and he’s okay with Hinata being his Achilles Heel. He thinks maybe Hinata always has been his Achilles heel, ever since they met all those years ago.
He falls further and further in love with Hinata, and the immortal parts of his body tell him that maybe calling Hinata isn’t the worst thing in the world, but then his Achilles heel in Tartarus whispers in his ear that falling deeper will only lead to drowning, and the fear swallows his conscience again.
flipping through our photographs (those moments never seem to last)
Towards the tail end of his first year of university, Kageyama’s mother sends him a box in the mail. She refuses to tell him what the contents of the box are, only tells him he’ll love it, that he’ll spend an afternoon with lovely emotions washing over him the way salty waves do when the ocean water has been warmed from the sun just a bit. That description scares him, but it doesn’t bring him any closer to guessing what could possibly be inside the box. The box he’s currently staring at, a pair of scissors in one hand, something holding him back from sliding a blade of the scissors underneath the packing tape that binds the box closed.
He continues to stare at the box, stormy blue eyes boring holes into the box with their hurricane turbulence as if he can intimidate the box into telling him what lies inside its cardboard walls. There is a tiny pastel yellow sticky-note stuck to one of the flaps, his name written on it in his mother’s ever-so-neat handwriting, and he breathes in, deep, deep, deep, deep , and takes the plunge.
The first cut through the packing tape feels like a breakthrough, like cutting into the thin adhesive that holds his skin stuck across his stitched-together lungs and glitter-glued bones, like letting go of how tightly wound he is. It feels like falling apart, but it feels needed, like taking apart a puzzle to rediscover how it all fits together, like taking apart a Lego castle to rebuild from scratch now that you’ve found that one missing piece.
He slides a tentative finger underneath the flap, and pulls upwards, hard , tearing the rest of the packing tape away and opening his vision to a glimpse of what looks up at him from the depths of the package. It’s endless bundles of photographs, organized into stacks by month and year, bound by multicolored rubber bands. From what he can see, they’re all of him and Hinata. Every single one.
Memory lane. That’s what she wants to send him walking down. He opens the box fully, and picks up the first bundle, sitting back on his heels to lean against the frame of his bed. If memory lane will open its gates to him, then he will take steps to traverse the path it lays out for him. In many of the pictures, the ones he obviously knew were being taken, the ones that weren’t candid shots, he’s looking at Hinata with a heavy glare resting on his face, falsified anger weighing down his eyebrows.
In all of the others, however...the candids, the ones where he had no idea a camera was trained on him from a distance, the ones where he was maybe too captivated by Hinata to pay attention to anything else, his face is softened, gaze warm and galaxies swirling in his eyes. Jeez , he thinks, is that really how I look at him?
Hinata must know. He has to. If that’s how Kageyama has been looking at him when he thinks there’s no one else around to see, Hinata has to have figured him out by now. He has to have noticed how absolutely head-over-heels Kageyama is for him. He has to have realized...that Kageyama is in love with him. There’s no way Hinata is that oblivious, right?
Right?
He can’t be. Kageyama lets the photo in his hand slip from between his fingers (his favorite, a shot his mother took in secret of him and Hinata wrestling in Kageyama’s backyard, bright North-star smiles cracked across their faces), letting it fall onto the floor of his dorm room. His pinky finger slides over to the photo and brushes gently across Hinata’s face, sending chills up his spine that make his whole body tremble.
A single tear slides down his cheek, so slow that it feels like time is thickening around him, so slow that he wonders if his tears are made of honey now. The tear lands on the photo, splattering smaller drops in a neat circle around it, and Kageyama’s vision blurs at the edges as thoughts of how badly he wants to hug Hinata crowd his mind.
if you let me, when it gets heavy (know i'll never let you be all alone)
Kageyama has no idea how Achilles ever lived like this. Having one singular weakness this big makes him feel like he’s too mortal, makes him feel like Hinata is the only thing that can hurt him (but Hinata’s presence is so big that the concept of immortality fades, becoming useless in the span of how weak Kageyama is for this one boy).
He’s coming home for the winter break, and he knows Hinata is, too. It scares him that he knows that because he saw it on Hinata’s Twitter, not because Hinata told him directly. It makes him picture that hourglass again, the sand slipping between his fingers that he believes he is powerless to stop. (He isn’t. He has the power, he just needs to learn how to use it.)
He sits on top of his suitcase, forcing it to close properly, and sends a text message to Hinata that he can only hope won’t be seen immediately.
kageyama : remember what i said, okay? if you ever need me, no matter what, i’ll be there. i’m not gonna let you be alone, alright?
He flops backward onto the bed, narrowly missing the top edge of the headboard, his head landing on his end goal of the pillow. He turns his phone face-down, closes his eyes, and lets himself fall asleep, knowing he’ll regret staying up too late when he has an early train to catch tomorrow morning.
i swear, always (i'll care)
He doesn’t check his phone in the morning, telling himself he’ll check it once he gets home. He wishes he had actually remembered to check it now that he is home, because now Hinata is standing on his doorstep, arms crossed over his chest and an indignant glare trained on Kageyama, demanding to know why Kageyama never read his response.
Kageyama attempts to explain to him the events that transpired which prevented him from checking his messages (falling asleep on the train, that’s it, that’s the only event), but Hinata is absolutely not having it.
“Kageyama, come on , I’m not stupid. Something’s up.”
Kageyama cocks his head, genuinely confused, because what is up? He knows Hinata is right, knows there are crumpled-up words on lined notebook paper at the back of his throat waiting to be spit up, smoothed out, and spoken, but he has no idea what the words are. He knows the general gist of them, the main idea of what he wants to get across, he just...hasn’t the faintest clue as to how to say it.
He sighs, and Hinata’s eyebrows draw together, concern wrinkling the center of his forehead the way determination would if they were on the court right now. “Seriously, Kags, what’s wrong?” Hinata turns and sits down on the porch stairs, gently dragging Kageyama down with him, a guiding hand softly wrapped around his wrist. Hinata’s voice is quieter as he adds, “You said you would always be there if I needed you, and you know, I’ll always be here when you need me too. This isn’t a one-sided thing.”
Oh, if only you knew .
“Shou, I-”
His throat freezes, like ice is coating its innermost layers, and the words remain crushed. He tries his hardest to unfold them, but they stay tightly packed in their place, refusing to move to the tip of his tongue and spill past his lips. Hinata stays still and silent, and Kageyama knows he’s waiting, waiting for those crumpled words, and Kageyama’s not sure he can give them to him, not sure he can spit them out and drop them into Hinata’s waiting hands.
He knows Hinata will let him take his time, let him think slowly like a popsicle melting in the sun, let him sculpt the right words on a pottery wheel with careful hands before he surrenders those words to the kiln. He always has.
“Um...Kags, before you say anything, I just want you to know I really hope you won’t let my feelings get in the way of our friendship.”
“Wh-What? Hinata, what are you talking about?”
“Oh...did you even see the notification?”
Kageyama shakes his head, thoughts starting to swirl around in his head and form a hurricane, jumping to conclusions and landing on an island. Hinata’s hand lets go of his wrist, and the hurricane fizzles out over cold water, and all of Kageyama’s breath has somehow been sucked out of his lungs.
“Kags, I-” Hinata pauses, worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth. “I…” His voice drops even quieter. “...love you.”
Kageyama’s heart drops into his stomach, and jumps up into his throat when the reality of Hinata’s words begins to sink in. A laugh is the last thing he expects to fall out of his mouth, but he chuckles, and replies, “Shou...I love you too, dumbass.” He laughs again, the sound seeming to echo through the air, ricocheting off the fence a few meters to their right. “I mean, jeez, I thought it was obvious.”
Hinata shakes his head, and Kageyama waits for a verbal response, but there isn’t one. Instead, Hinata reaches up to cup Kageyama’s face in his hands, and hesitates for mere seconds before pulling Kageyama down to kiss him.
When his lips meet Hinata’s, it’s a lot different from what everyone (the movies) told him his first kiss would be like. It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t feel like fireworks. It’s slow, like watching honey drip from a spoon into a cup of tea, and soft (at least, until Hinata accidentally bites his bottom lip, and they can’t hold back their laughter).
Kageyama pulls back, just barely, resting his forehead against Hinata’s and letting the tips of their noses brush. “Don’t you dare forget, I’ll always care.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what.”