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A shindo one earthquake is felt by almost no one, yet they happen multiple times a day in Japan. Kiyoomi doesn’t like earthquakes.
They slip the ground out from under his feet — all stability gone, and nothing to hold on to. They’re unexpected inconveniences that cause nothing but trouble. Things fall off shelves and sometimes, when they’re big enough, he watches as they crash to the floor, flinching at the shatter.
Hinata Shouyou is an earthquake of his own. Kiyoomi doesn’t like him either.
Hinata Shouyou joins the MSBY Black Jackals at twenty two years old, having just returned from playing in Brazil and ready for more. Kiyoomi could see the hunger to play in Hinata’s eyes, and it was a problem.
(The first time he meets eyes with the redhead in their locker room, Kiyoomi has to look away in fear that Hinata’s hunger might infiltrate his skin.)
Kiyoomi doesn’t like people who are careless and unprepared — spontaneous. He doesn’t like things that will shake up his routine, split the ground in two on his way to practice in the morning.
He doesn’t want to slip between the cracks, down to his inevitable doom at the earth’s core, so he avoids it. He washes his hands three times before shaking them off and drying them with a towel to avoid getting sick. He does extra stretches before and after practice to avoid getting injured.
When Kiyoomi sees Hinata step out of the apartment across the hallway from his, he sighs and shuts the door — waiting an extra three minutes before opening it again and stepping out the door.
Hinata’s talking to Bokuto.
It’s been a month since he joined the team, and he’s loudly whispering to Bokuto in the corner of the gym. It’s supposed to be a quiet conversation, clearly, yet it’s not.
Because Kiyoomi can hear their conversation through the tension idle in his fingers as he clenches his fist. His pinky hurts, and he relaxes ever so slightly as to not injure it. This isn’t important, though, and as much as it may surprise those who surround him, neither is Bokuto.
What is important is that they’re talking about pets. Pets that come in all shapes and forms, such as the fish that reside in Onigiri Miya and Suna’s pet cat that is debatably cute — even if it makes his nose itch and run as far as he wants to run away from Hinata Shouyou.
But their pets don’t matter, because Hinata is talking about his sister, Natsu, who was recently gifted a pet puppy for her birthday — and is showing Bokuto photos of the proclaimed Runa, an Akita Inu. Brindle colored, he thinks, if he heard the owl chirp correctly.
Moresoe, Kiyoomi wants to ask him for photos of Runa. He wants to see the big, small, maybe tiny, little guy — or girl. This is the heart of his conflict, really, and it could be solved in seven footsteps and four words maximum. Yet his nails dig deeper into his palm and he walks away.
After all, prolonging the inevitable disaster for as long as possible is his priority, and if that means he has to limit contact with Hinata then so be it.
Because he sees Hinata. He looks at him far too often, if he’s being honest with himself, and knows what will happen — and he’s scared, and doesn’t like change, or surprise, or things that will eventually send him plummeting through concrete.
There’s a persistence that Hinata holds in relation to communicating with Kiyoomi, and the raven stubbornly resists against it. It’s a fight to the death between a wall of tension — one unwilling to relent in his will to befriend the other, and the other all-knowing being predicting his fall when he finally gets too close.
It’s a battle between tectonic plates and one will win yet neither will lose.
“You’re funny.” It’s warm and hot and Kiyoomi thinks he’s on fire when Hinata’s voice creeps up on him — without warning or preparation.
They’re cleaning up after practice and ah he shouldn’t be here, it’s too risky — too dangerous. He really doesn’t know why he’s here.
It may have been because a few of the usual people who shove away equipment weren't there today, and it also might’ve been because he heard Hinata volunteer to help clean up. Maybe. He doesn’t know.
Kiyoomi ignores him.
Hinata steps next to him anyways.
“Basilisks can run over eleven kilometers per hour, you look like one.”
Where did that come from? “I’m not one.”
Hinata picks up a volleyball and tosses it lightly, “I know.”
“Mh.”
“You aren’t running from me now.” He sounds proud about it. Hm.
“It seems that way.”
There’s a rumble in the back of Kiyoomi’s throat and it hurts. He thinks he should stop at the conbini to buy honey on his way home.
“You guys are friends,” Motoya drawls through the speakers of Kiyoomi’s phone.
“We aren’t.”
“Hinata Shouyou is friends with everyone, Kiyoomi.”
“Maybe, but we aren’t friends.”
“God.” Kiyoomi sets the phone down on his kitchen counter, ignoring his cousin's voice and grabbing his breakfast out of the fridge. “Maybe you don’t think you’re friends, but he does.”
“That’s his problem then, isn’t it?” He needs to go on a grocery run, he notes. Eggs, milk, yogurt.
“You’re a jackass.”
Kiyoomi closes the refrigerator and hums. “Good to know. I’m not doing anything about it, though.”
“I never expected otherwise!”
Okay, so maybe within the past three months they’ve become friends. Whatever, he’s still not admitting it — because admitting it opens the chance for an epicenter to arise.
The shaking intensifies as he wakes up in the middle of the night, with nothing on his mind aside from red and orange and pretty tanned skin. He thinks that this is the start, but he knows it started a long time ago.
It could have started when he still wore yellow and green that tasted like lemonade in his mind. When he watched sweat pool on grey and white and lips form a beg for forgiveness — for permission.
Maybe, a little later — after the picture had fermented in his mind for a few years. A delicacy, really. A pickled plum plucked out of the jar and tossed to Osaka, back to breathing the air of its home country.
It doesn’t matter now, though, because it’s upgraded from a one to a three and maybe, maybe it’ll reach a six if he’s not careful enough. Quite possibly, chandeliers will crash upon his skull and bright eyes will watch them fall just as Kiyoomi does with objects on a shelf — but Hinata may not step in to protect him.
So, he falls out of bed with the elegance of fur on a wet dog and he pours down the hallway to brew a cup of tea.
He drifts back asleep one hour and thirty three minutes later.
Well, it’s strange — the fact that Hinata is currently poking at the bruises under Kiyoomi’s eyes without a word escaping his mouth. He’s never this quiet, especially not around Kiyoomi. As the self proclaimed “Silence Destroyer,” he takes a hold of their conversations and guides Kiyoomi through them — they like it this way.
And yet, Kiyoomi can only feel Hinata’s breath spreading on his collarbone as he sits on the locker room bench with Hinata standing in front of him — biting his lips in silent contemplation.
“I didn’t sleep well. That’s all.”
Hinata lets go of his lip and pulls his finger away to laugh, “I know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“You’ve seen my highschool grades, not my proudest moment.”
Kiyoomi rolls his eyes and kicks at Hinata’s foot, “Are you going to let me get changed yet?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
A locker bangs behind them, a warning alarm. It’s coming.
Hinata rubs his thumb under Kiyoomi’s left eye and smooths out the skin one last time, Kiyoomi flinches. “Fine.”
The storm arrives a day later in the late afternoon. It starts, brews, with a walk home, a plus one following behind — uninvited.
It escalates with a quiet acknowledgment and an all-knowing being left in the dark, curious as to what the other knows. A climax arises with the stop of movement and standstill shaking, blurred words escaping bitten lips.
It ends, but not really — because it never actually ends — with jackets laid on bricks and two bodies sitting next to each other, a conversation slowly dissolving into mist.
“It doesn’t have to be forever, you know. It’s not the end of your life. I’m not trying to tie you down with full commitment, not yet. But we can try, right?”
A breath, it’s five. The Shindo Scale mocks him.
“Yeah, I want to. Try, that is, at least.” Kiyoomi’s hand shakes and the sky laughs as thunder bawls in his ears in the distance.
Shouyou smiles. They don’t hold hands, don’t touch, not yet — maybe not ever, for the most of it, but that’s okay.
That’s okay because Shouyou understands, and he wants to try — find the glass borders of their relationship, try romance, test life and see what happens. So Kiyoomi breathes, and he wants this just as much — if not more.
Because Shouyou is an earthquake, even when he insists that he’s learned self management over the years, but his cheeks are soft when he smiles and Kiyoomi wants to reach out — and now he can. If he so chooses, considering that Shouyou is here and sitting on the staircase of their apartment building with him.
“Do you want to stay over tonight?” It slips out of his mouth naturally, like a vase off a table, and Shouyou stands.
“Yeah, okay.”