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He is twelve years old and there is a boy.
(This is where it starts.)
There are always boys, of course; there are boys at the park, boys at the store, boys filling the classroom and spilling onto the court, fighting on the soccer field and throwing worms at each other in the classroom when the teacher’s too busy scrubbing at the blackboard.
But despite all this, there is a boy.
He knows the boy well and, at the same time, doesn’t know him at all. He knows that the boy does not go to the same school as him, because despite how he’s looked (and he hasn’t looked – much), he hasn’t seen the boy.
He knows that the boy is older than him because while he’s twelve years old, the boy leaves in the morning with the cardigan and tie of the neighboring middle school.
He knows the boy’s favorite food because every evening, without fail, the mother comes home with a brown bag of taiyaki tucked under her elbow, and the boy comes out to help her carry her things inside (but he always reaches for the bag first).
The boy is there, in the house across the street, the one with a creaking porch and jutting window boxes and mismatched curtains hanging on faded panes, and he sits in the yard after school, before it gets dark, and follows everything with his camera.
He is twelve years old when the boy notices him for the first time, standing with his legs apart with his naturally awkward posture and blessed with an angry furrow in his brow when he doesn’t know what to say. He is twelve when the boy smiles and waves, and it is all he can do to stick out a hand and give two stiff waves back before flushing beyond relief and making a break for his own door.
He is twelve years old and there is a boy with a soft voice and big eyes and a camera almost the size of his own face (and he can’t help but wave when he sees).
He is thirteen years old, and there are boys, but more importantly, there is volleyball.
“Kageyama,” he turns, looks up at the only upperclassman who doesn’t seem to have some kind of vendetta against him, and blinks. “You need to collaborate with your teammates,” the third year, Tobio doesn’t remember his name because he doesn’t set, bends a little to see meet Tobio’s eyes. “A setter can’t win based on his skill alone.”
“Iwa-chan?” Both Tobio and the third year turn to look at the setter, the good one, and Tobio tries not to make a weird face. He knows that he gets on Oikawa-senpai’s nerves because Kindaichi told him so, but he doesn’t want to make an enemy of the player he respects the most.
Oikawa bounds over, stops at Iwa’s side, and looks Tobio over. There’s a moment of sharp silence – Tobio shifts his weight – before Oikawa starts a verbal stream of consciousness, dragging Iwa away at a pace only he can keep up with.
Tobio is fourteen when he learns that’s he’s the best setter – best player on the whole team, and takes it upon himself to carry them to the middle school championships.
There is no Iwa or Oikawa to look at him and tell him what to do or where to stop, because there is no one better than him; Yahaba and Watari both spend more of the game on the bench than they do anywhere else, play second fiddle to a boy a year younger. Tobio is only sidelined because he’s younger, but there is still the next year.
Fifteen years, a decade and a half, and Tobio knows what it’s like to run and run and run himself right into the ground. He walks home with a ghost of a cape on his shoulders, the weight of a forced crown on his head, the heavy breaths of someone so young growing so old in his lungs.
Tobio wants to see anything but volleyball, and so he looks ahead instead of at the ground, and noses right into the chin of a boy.
(This is how it goes.)
“My, aren’t you a sad one,” the boy says, brown eyes and warm voice and, sure enough, an enormous camera tucked under his arm. He’s smiling down at Tobio, though, so Tobio can’t help the gentle explosion he feels in his stomach (if that makes any sense. Tobio has never been good at metaphors).
“H-h-hello,” Tobio stutters twice, twice, how shameful, before slamming his arms into his sides and bending into an intense bow with enough respect to make a nineteenth century samurai cry.
“Evening,” the boy returns easily, relaxedly, comfortably, and Tobio is sick in the way birds dance almost feverishly in the spring, except Tobio can’t move can’t breathe can’t do anything but wait. “Do you have a minute?”
Tobio has an hour, a day, some weeks of a month, Tobio has time, and so he nods and lets the boy pull him to the edge of the sidewalk and out of the way of potential pedestrians. The boy flips open the side of his camera and tilts the screen so that Tobio can see, and then he plays the video.
The movie is good. It’s good in the way a boy’s bedhead is good to a girl who might find everything he does to be good, regardless of the mundaneness or awkwardness of the thing. But the movie is not mundane or awkward, because the boy made it, and Tobio likes the movie almost as much as he likes the boy.
“Did you like it?”
All Tobio can do is open his mouth, shut it (ouch, he bit his tongue), and give the stiffest of stiff nods, a nod worthy of an award for stiffness and complete rigidity. The boy laughs, and Tobio does not run away.
So he’s sixteen (well, almost) and still learning to balance volleyball and everything else (and by balance, he means not let volleyball make up any more than ninety-five percent of his thought process) and then, suddenly, once again, there is a boy.
“Ennoshita Chikara, I’m a second year. Nice to meet you.” Yes, yes it is, but also, what are you doing here. “I play volleyball mostly for the fun of it, since I’d like to grow up and go into film,” and this might be the first time Tobio’s seen him without a camera.
The little orange ball of scream elbows him in the side, “Why are you staring at that second-year?” And Tobio has an excuse to look away from the boy, from Ennoshita, to shove this loud teammate far away, far, all the way to the other side of the gym.
Tobio’s (almost) sixteen, awkward, gangly, and he’s taller than the boy. By five entire centimeters. He doesn’t know why this pleases him, but it does enough so for him to buckle down and find a way to make this thing with Hinata work. (“What is that creepy face – are you smiling?” “Spike the ball or the next one’s to your face.”)
Tobio is sixteen (officially, legally, according to the earth’s rounds on the sun) when he sets for Ennoshita for the first time, and he almost overcompensates for the distance and sends the ball to the second year’s face.
“Whoa,” Ennoshita catches himself, catching the ball in one hand and saving Kiyoko on the sidelines from any potential danger. “Everything okay, Kageyama?”
Tobio nods furiously, which is a step from the awkward waves and nods he used to give in middle school and before (he firmly believes that those days have long since passed), and earns a (light, fluffy, warm) laugh from his upperclassman.
“What?” Tanaka strolls over, suddenly interested, “What’s happening? Did Kage tell a joke?”
“Go away, Tanaka,” Ennoshita shoos his classmate away before returning his focus to Kageyama, who is (still) taller than him. “Right,” he tosses Tobio the ball, “Let’s try that again?”
“Okay,” Tobio’s voice cracks on the second syllable. This time, Tanaka hears it, and Tobio quickly learns that upperclassmen are merciless. (But maybe it’s okay. There’s a chuckle that trills over the rest, and Tobio thinks that maybe the teasing isn’t so bad if something like that can come out of it.)
Sixteen is a good age for Tobio, because his mom finally makes friends with the Ennoshitas and invites the family of seven over for New Year’s Eve soba.
Ennoshita’s little brothers crowd in front of the TV, his parents laugh loudly over poker with the Kageyamas, and Tobio slurps his noodles and tries to think of a conversation starter that isn’t so about that Interhigh Tournament you didn’t play much in or you have a very beautiful everything.
“You have a cool name,” Tobio blurts, because where the hell did that come from.
“Thanks,” Ennoshita snorts, but seems genuine anyway (how is that possible). “I’d like to say I’m as great as the phrase I was named after, but,” he shrugs.
Tobio runs the phrase in his own mind – a person who does something without expecting credit or thanks – and thinks that if anyone’s got a good sense of premonition, it’s Ms. Ennoshita.
“Are you ready for the new year?” Ennoshita asks, and Tobio straightens involuntarily at the sound of the second year talking to him. Ennoshita tilts his head at Tobio, waiting for an answer, while Tobio flushes hard enough to feel a little lightheaded.
“Yes,” Tobio manages, sounding a little more aggressive than intended, but Ennoshita doesn’t seem put off by it. “We’re going to win this next tournament,” because of course they are, is that even a question?
Ennoshita’s eyes crinkle at the corners from smiling so hard (or that could be the sleep wrinkles; Tobio may never know) and he pats Tobio on the back before wishing him a new year, the only one in the house watching the clock.
Tobio feels that warm hand for a long time after the Ennoshitas go home. He smiles at the chair Ennoshita had been sitting in; his mother smiles and wishes him the best for the New Year.
Sixteen and a half is when it happens, when Tobio’s watching Ennoshita roll the ball cart into the shed and realizes that they’re the only ones in the gym, that everyone else has already left, either to home or to more training in the park, in the case of a certain flame-haired decoy.
The butterflies – the birds, swans, colossal geese – in Tobio’s stomach all but erupt and burst into warm chaos as Tobio walks, rigid as a robot, up to where his upperclassman’s locking the shed. He turns; there’s a camera in his hand. When he smiles, Tobio’s heart does a thing.
“Yeah?” Tobio says nothing. “What’s up?” Nothing. Ennoshita raises an eyebrow; Tobio stares right back. “Everything okay?” Tobio exhales, finally, and nods.
“Well, okay,” Ennoshita pops in one ear bud from his bag and hums absentmindedly while picking up his clothes. Tobio flushes behind the locker door until Ennoshita’s almost ready to leave him. “My favorite,” he nods at his screen of music choices, “what do you like?”
“I like you,” Tobio blurts, prematurely and awkwardly and way too quickly. For a moment he isn’t sure if Ennoshita heard or not, until he sees that the boy’s fingers have frozen on the screen. Ennoshita looks up, slowly, and it’s a wonder that Tobio hasn’t spontaneously combusted already.
“You,” Ennoshita says, stops. “You,” tries again, stops. “Me?” Because they’ve now resorted to monosyllabic conversation.
“Of —” Tobio doesn’t want him to be surprised, wants him to know how wonderful he is, “Of course, you,” he says quietly, suddenly actually caring that the others might be close enough to hear. His face is burning so intensely that he can feel a faint ringing in his ears; he’s always had a little penchant for the dramatic.
Ennoshita opens his mouth in an almost inaudible exhale, looking at Tobio as though for the first time. He pulls the bud from his ear and wraps the wire around two fingers, eliminating distractions to give the setter his full attention.
“I—” Tobio starts, right when it becomes clear that Ennoshita has something to say. The upperclassman pauses, nods for him to go on, but Tobio doesn’t know why he even opened his mouth; he doesn’t actually have something to say, he just panicked when it became clear that the second year was ready to speak, and things just went from there.
Ennoshita gives a little chuckle and the mood lightens a little, relieving some tension from both of their postures. “Kageyama,” Ennoshita starts, and Tobio straightens to attention, still looking down a bit to stare at Ennoshita’s collarbone instead of his eyes. “If you don’t mind my asking, when…?”
“I don’t know,” Tobio lies immediately, and maybe Ennoshita knows him better than he thought, because he gives a small smile and shakes his head before taking up a more serious expression again.
“I’m very – I’m very surprised,” he starts, and Tobio nods along because he’s not alone in that aspect; the confession had surprised them both. Tobio, in fact, is still reeling. He wipes his sweaty palms on his shorts. “And I’m flattered, of course. Honored, and happy. Thank you.”
Tobio beams at his collar; beneath his fringe can just barely see Ennoshita’s mouth moving as he talks, the way he keeps a calming sort of smile that’s more reassuring than anything else, but one that fades a little before he continues. “But I’m not looking for – I’m assuming you would like to go somewhere from here,”
The truth is, Tobio has no idea what he wants. Feelings just happened, somehow, all on their own, and he has no endgame to think of.
“—But I’m not looking to start a relationship. For a while, at least.” Ennoshita stops there, long enough for Tobio to blink and actually meet his gaze, which is caught somewhere between apologetic and concerned.
Tobio exhales, breathes, takes a moment to nod and understand the entire situation he’s put himself in. Ennoshita holds his gaze the entire time, not looking away, for once, until Tobio finally regains the urge to speak.
It’s a clear rejection, but if Tobio is being completely honest with himself, he doesn’t know what he expected. A relationship, like Ennoshita said? A ‘maybe, some time’? His main focus while confessing – if there was any thought to it at all – had not been to get something back, but to let something go. Tobio likes Ennoshita so much it’s hard not to bundle his feelings into a ball and spike it at the upperclassman’s face (although, looking back, that seems to be exactly what he did).
“…‘for a while’?”
A pause before Ennoshita gives a surprised laugh; Tobio likes the sound, “Is that all you got?” He shakes his head. “But thank you, Kageyama. Really. I’m glad you told me.”
Tobio beams a little harder at that – is it weird to think that maybe the rejection is just as good as an acceptance would have been? – and eases his posture to less-than-soldier-like. It’s easier to breathe, easier to stand in the same room as Ennoshita and hold a conversation with him, now. His heart has not stopped kicking up a fuss, but that’s nothing new.
“Thank you,” Tobio says, not completely sure why, and offers his upperclassman what he hopes is a smile, which Ennoshita returns without hesitation.
The moment is, of course, as always, broken by a small body charging headfirst into his back, “—are you doing, we’re all waiting for you outside—”
He is sixteen and three quarters and one-sided love isn’t bad at all.