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"You two have torn my last nerve to shreds, and it's over."
Karasuno volleyball club captain Ennoshita Chikara stood with his arms crossed and expression stern as he regarded his setter and his decoy. There had been something off between them since the beginning of the school year, but he had just decided that it was the result of their unsuccessful campaign at nationals. However, the unease amongst the team's dynamic duo had escalated to the point of Kageyama and Hinata actually coming to blows.
And if he had to endure Yachi running into his classroom during a lesson again to inform him of a brawl in the clubroom, Kageyama and Hinata would not live to regret it.
When he saw that his kouhai were unmoved by his stern words, Ennoshita clenched his jaw and forced himself to calm down before he resorted to the last option he had available to him outside of taking the matter to Takeda-sensei and Ukai-san. "You two need to learn to respect each other more, so for an entire week during practice - or as long as it takes for me to be satisfied that you two will behave - you two are going to switch positions." At their matching blank stares, Ennoshita clarified. "Hinata, you will be setting, and Kageyama, you will be a middle blocker."
That got their attention.
"B-but Enno-san, I'm not any good at setting." Hinata seemed genuinely distressed by this rather than the punishment itself.
Ennoshita couldn't fault the observation because Hinata's overhand everything was abysmal, but it was hardly an excuse. "Then how would you not benefit from the practice?" Hinata opened his mouth to rebut, but even he could not find a legitimate reason to wriggle out of his penance.
What concerned Ennoshita, though, was Kageyama's blank face and overall lack of reaction. "What about you, Kageyama? Why would it be the end of the world for you to hit Hinata's sets instead of the other way around?"
Kageyama's head hung and his shoulders began to shake. Ennoshita frowned, afraid that he had stepped on some sort of landmine, until he noticed the soft sound of laughter. A chill involuntarily ran up his spine.
"I look forward to the challenge, Captain," Kageyama said finally.
Ennoshita raised a brow. "It's not much of a challenge for you, apart from not running the on-court gameplay. You're already a pretty advanced spiker."
When Kageyama raised his head, there was a frightening smile on his face. Ennoshita and Hinata both flinched. "Not me, Ennoshita-san. I like a challenge. I think it will be good for Hinata to see how hard being a setter really is."
Hinata looked dismayed at the glee on Kageyama's face, and Ennoshita couldn't blame him one bit.
* * *
The first day of their sentence was on a Wednesday, and Hinata wanted to scream in frustration before they even stepped onto the court. The entire team had fallen silent when Ennoshita told them about the temporary change of assignments for Hinata and Kageyama.
It was Tanaka and Nishinoya who broke the silence with gales of laughter, while Tsukishima cackled quietly in the corner with Yamaguchi. The first years just looked bewildered to the point where one of them quietly asked if this was a thing the team did often.
None of them truly understood what it was like to play with Kageyama as a matched set. After playing Shiratorizawa and then losing in the first round of nationals, Hinata became acutely aware of many areas in his game that lacked. His serving was pathetic, his receiving even worse, and his awareness of the other team was nearly non-existent. These were things that Kageyama had been telling him all year long, albeit not in the friendliest of terms, but it hurt when Hinata saw the fruits of his personal failures come to life on a bigger stage.
He wanted to be better, and Kageyama had said he would help him. What they could not agree on was Kageyama's definition of help falling somewhere between disgust at Hinata's inadequacy and plain old verbal abuse.
Hinata knew Kageyama would simply use this as more ammunition in his quest to make Hinata feel like the worst volleyball player in the world. Of course, Hinata would try his best — he always did — but it was never enough for Kageyama even when he was playing the position he excelled in.
It was with a weary sigh that Hinata trudged out of the clubroom.
Warm-ups and receive practice went as normal, but when Hinata lined up in the setter's spot for spike practice, Ukai raised a brow. "You lost, Short Stuff?"
Quickly, Ennoshita pulled Ukai off to the side, where they had an animated conversation that ended in bawdy laughter from the coach. Hinata couldn't help his distress that everyone on the team saw fit to laugh at his misfortune, while Kageyama got to hang back and take it easy for a week.
With that, the games had officially begun.
Yachi, who was tossing him the balls he was going to set, gave him an over-zealous thumbs up before the first spiker, Kinoshita, started his net approach.
Hinata poised himself to receive the ball. Kinoshita wouldn't break his arms off if Hinata gave him a bad set. No, he was a good senpai. They'll all understand if he isn't as accurate as Kageyama or their freshman setter. Hinata kept telling himself that over and over as the ball floated towards him.
A ball that promptly missed his hands and struck him in the face.
From somewhere to his left, Hinata heard an exasperated sigh, but the 'dumbass Hinata' he had been expecting from Kageyama never came. Instead, a hand cradled the curve of his cheek and raised his chin.
Kageyama was looking intently at him before he gently poked at Hinata's nose, where the ball had struck. "Not broken," he muttered. "When you're watching the ball, look through your fingers like a window so you don't lose track of where it's falling." With that, Kageyama went back to his place in line and acted as if the entire team wasn't gawking at him.
Hinata stared at Kageyama, bewildered. "O-okay," he stammered, still stunned by the fact that he was being given advice instead of a smack to the head. Rubbing his aching nose, Hinata gave Yachi a tight smile. "Can we try that again?"
This time, Hinata managed to get the ball at a respectable height, even though Kinoshita had to adjust his jump to hit it. He gave Hinata a grin and a thumbs-up before getting back in line.
The next hitter was Tsukishima, who simply said, "I like mine farther away from the net."
Nodding, Hinata waited for the toss and did as Kageyama had said and watched the ball through the little window of his fingers. He had no idea how to do as Tsukishima had requested, so he relied on the old adage of pointing his fingers where he wanted the ball to go and hoped for a miracle.
The ball sailed through the air, and Hinata watched in horror as it landed on the other side of the net and rolled off into the corner of the gym. There were a few snickers from the team, but Hinata only had eyes for Kageyama, who was acting as if Hinata wasn't spilling his inadequacy all over the court and defaming setters everywhere.
Ukai made a noise that sounded like stifled profanity before dragging Hinata off to the side. "Are you visualizing where you want the ball to go?" Hinata nodded. "Now, are you pushing through the set? Having your hands following the arc you want the ball to take?"
Blinking, Hinata scratched his head. "So that's what he meant." Ukai's lip curled in confusion before he shoved Hinata back to the setter's spot.
The next few sets were hittable, at least. But as Kageyama stepped forward to the top of the line, Hinata's hands began to shake. Kageyama had been oddly patient with Hinata's failings as a setter, but he had not been forced to spike any of these terrible tosses.
Before Hinata could focus on the throw from Yachi, the ball was almost at his hands. Gulping in a hasty breath, he propelled the ball as hard as he could in Kageyama's general direction with his eyes squeezed shut. There was a loud smack of ball on floor, and panic burbled in Hinata's throat as he was sure the ball had not even reached spiking altitude.
Fists clenched and ready to defend himself, Hinata inched one eye open only to find that the entire team was gaping at him. Except Kageyama, who was staring at the palm of his hand. He began to approach Hinata, who wanted to run if not for his traitorous knees threatening to give way beneath him.
An unreadable expression Hinata instinctively distrusted was spread across Kageyama's face as his hand lurched out towards Hinata. Hinata could only squawk through the red hot fear coursing through him, but just as he was ready to curl into a ball on the floor and hope a teammate would save him, Hinata felt a hand ruffle his hair. His eyes shot wide open to see a pleased smile on Kageyama's lips — the kind reserved for an especially well executed quick strike.
"Nice toss, Hinata," Kageyama said before returning to the back of the line as if he hadn't come within a breath of making Hinata soil himself.
Ennoshita, the next spiker to go, stared blinking at where Kageyama had been standing. Behind him a few spaces back, Tanaka grumbled about Hinata saving the decent tosses for Kageyama. There were a few murmurs of agreement before Ennoshita loudly cleared his throat and raised an expectant brow at Hinata.
“Hinata, when I said you had to set all week, it didn’t mean you get to take all week on warm-ups.”
Jolting out of his stupor, Hinata cried, “Yes, Captain!”
The rest of spike practice proceeded with a minimum of disaster. Hinata had flubbed one spike to Tanaka, but the team’s brand new ace had saved it by lashing out his left hand and whipping it over the net. None of the sets, however, could match the one that Hinata had sent to Kageyama with his eyes closed.
After serving exercises, the rest of practice was spent playing rotating 3-on-3, in which players would rotate into and out of one side and then join the rotation on the opposite team. After settling in, Hinata felt slightly more confident about his chances to survive an hour of this fast-paced gameplay.
As usual, Hinata grossly over-estimated his adaptability when it came to technical skill. Set right over Tsukishima’s head. Not enough power and dribbled shy of Yamaguchi. Wrong side of the net again. Accidentally flubbed backwards. Ball in Hinata’s face.
Nobody had a bad word to say to Hinata, however, but that might have been the most frustrating thing of all. Every botched play was a lost point for whichever side he was on, and the knowledge that he was botching plays fairly equally between the two sides did nothing to appease the feeling of failure in Hinata. He just wanted someone — anyone — to tell him that he was as bad as he really was.
Slowly, but surely, Hinata simmered until he was pretty sure he ran out of ways to utterly embarrass himself. Tsukishima had stopped even trying to hit his wild sets by this point, and Tanaka’s boisterous run-up had begun to wear down. Hinata’s head hung while he waited to be rotated back in, and for the first time since he could remember, he didn’t want to play anymore.
A hand touched his shoulder, but he barely flinched at the contact. However, when he cast a cursory glance to see who was behind him, Hinata started when he noticed that it was Kageyama, a tight frown on his face.
“Bring it to me. I’ll hit it.”
Hinata blinked twice before his face twisted into a sneer. “What is wrong with you, Kageyama?” he shouted. Several players, both on and off the court, turned to stare, but he didn’t care. “Why are you being so nice? It’s weird and wrong and so not you, so what gives?”
By this point, Hinata’s arms were waving frantically, but Kageyama didn’t move a muscle save for a single arched brow. They stood toe to toe, and Hinata refused to be the one to bow to the tension crackling between them. Everyone and everything else in the gym faded into a dull memory as Hinata held his ground.
Finally, it was Kageyama who broke the stalemate by looking away, his cheeks warm with the beginnings of a blush. “I just wanted you to stop blaming yourself,” he said, almost too softly for Hinata to hear.
“Huh?”
Kageyama lanced his fingers through his hair and growled. “Ever since we lost, you won’t stop talking about how bad you played and what you could’ve done better.” He grabbed Hinata by the shirt and shook him, a much more familiar scowl now inhabiting his face. “We all have things we need to be better at! If you suck at something, it’s okay as long as you’re working to be better at it. I thought if you realized that, you would appreciate how much better you are at spiking and get over this stupid self-pity of yours.”
“That isn’t nice at all, Kageyama! Why would you think doing something that makes me feel like a failure would help me?”
“How was I supposed to know you’d get worse instead of better?” Kageyama wheeled around and plowed his way through their gawking teammates and to the clubroom.
Hinata stared after him, a little big angry and a lot confused, before he followed his angry setter. No one stopped them.
Right after Kageyama slammed the door shut, Hinata flung it back open. He stalked over to Kageyama and pushed him roughly into the row of lockers. “Now it’s just me and you. I want a real answer, not whatever you were trying to do back there.”
Kageyama’s chest heaved as he glared back at Hinata, but with a heavy sigh, he slumped until he was almost in a squat, head hanging low between his knees. “I wanted you to know how hard I work for you. All that practice, yeah, I want to be the best, but I want us both to be the best. I thought that if you saw how much I want you to win, you might . . .” The end of Kageyama’s sentence was shrouded by a mumble, but Hinata would not let him off that easily.
“Might what, Kageyama?” Hinata crossed his arms and tapped his foot in front of his crestfallen setter.
Kageyama cast a weary glance at Hinata before rubbing his face roughly with his hands. “I like you, Hinata. I just wanted to make you like me, too.”
If Hinata could have foreseen a thousand scenarios about how this conversation would play out, this was the one he likely would have laughed at or written off entirely. Yet he knew his ears had not deceived him; Kageyama had said it in as clear and concise of Japanese as he was capable. Hinata simply did not know how to believe it.
“Are you messing with me?” Hinata asked quietly. “I know you can be cruel, but that’s too mean, even for you.”
Head jerking upwards, Kageyama looked stricken as he shot to his feet. “After everything we’ve worked through, you really think I would do that to you?”
The words made Hinata’s breath hitch because he believed them. “Y-you like me? Like, like like me?”
Kageyama’s lip curled. “That is literally the stupidest sentence you have ever used.”
“Answer the question!” Hinata fired, unwilling to let Kageyama change the subject.
Crossing his arms and turning away, Kageyama’s shoulders bowed as he said, “Yes, Hinata. I like you like that.”
Hinata blinked and scratched his head. “Then why didn’t you just say so? You didn’t have to pick a fight with me in front of Yacchan again.”
Kageyama slammed his palm into a locker. “It’s not that easy for me, dumbass!” He turned to glare at Hinata. “If I could just say what I felt when it needed to be said, do you really think I would even be here right now? In this school? On this team, with you?”
With a huff, Hinata realized that Kageyama was right, and when he backtracked to the strangeness between them since the beginning of the school year, it made a lot more sense—in a warped, Kageyama-like way. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
Grinning, Hinata put his fists on his hips and puffed out his chest. “I accept your confession. Now, where are my homemade chocolates?”
With a roar, Kageyama tackled Hinata, who fell to the floor with a shrieking laugh. They rolled around on the floor, each of them jockeying for leverage against the other, but finally it was Hinata who had Kageyama pinned down. “So, you didn’t bring chocolates, and then you tried to punch me in the head. I don’t think this boyfriend thing is working out for you.”
Kageyama turned beet red and spluttered, “I didn’t say I wanted to be your boyfriend, stupid shitty Hinata!”
“Two adjectives this time,” Hinata teased. “You’re improving. Does that mean you’ll be up to three by next year.”
Bellowing, Kageyama flipped them over so he was pinning Hinata down with his superior weight. Hinata writhed to escape, but he stilled as the anger drained off of Kageyama’s face. It was replaced by something so strange and out of place that Hinata could not try to identify it.
When Kageyama dipped his head to brush their lips together, Hinata gasped out loud. He wanted to reach up and touch his lips, but his arms were practically stapled down by Kageyama. Instead, he darted out his tongue in an effort to understand this new flavor. He saw Kageyama shiver, so with a smirk, he did it again.
The next kiss was harder in response, but Hinata didn’t think he minded it at all. Being liked was pretty awesome.
* * *
Ennoshita’s eyes bulged when he saw Kageyama and Hinata sprawled out on the floor kissing.
After the loud bang, he had just wanted to check on them and make sure Kageyama wasn’t murdering their all-star decoy. Them making out was not even on the list of possibilities he had envisioned walking into. Maiming, yes. Dismemberment, possibly. Verbal sparring, a given.
Gently, he closed the door as to not disturb the occupants and walked woodenly back to the flock of curious crows waiting on a report from their captain.
Finally, Ennoshita said, “Tomorrow, they’re going back to their regular positions. They worked it out.” Not sure what else to do, he wandered off to begin tearing down the net for the night.
“But what did you see?” Tanaka asked as the whole team collectively leaned in closer to catch the response.
Ennoshita gave them a little half smile before glancing away meaningfully.
“Ugh,” Tsukishima spat. “At least they can’t reproduce.”
Everyone present groaned collectively before Kinoshita socked Ennoshita on the shoulder. “You know what that means, eh, Chikara? You owe me a thousand yen.”
“I know, I know,” Ennoshita sighed. “If the clubroom is ever safe to go into again, that is.”
Tsukishima shuddered at this, but Ennoshita barely noticed due to his attention being sharply drawn to Nishinoya, who had gone over to the clubroom door and was banging on it.
“You’d better be a top, Shouyou, or I’ll never teach you anything again!”
* * *
Hinata and Kageyama were barely able to make out the shouting on the other side of the door—just enough to be utterly baffled.
“What’s ‘be a top’ mean,” Hinata asked, gnawing on his lower lip as he tried and failed to puzzle it out.
“Hell if I know.” Kageyama shrugged. “Nishinoya-senpai is weird.”
Kageyama’s lips hovered over Hinata’s, who inhaled sharply in anticipation. “Yeah, weird,” he murmured before resuming their unexpected yet highly enjoyable end of practice activity.