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When he is still, Kageyama believes he holds all the power of the world in his hands.
He lifts up a hand, glacier-slow and beautiful as wings spread, to card his fingers through the morning light streaming through the blinds (half-closed, as if they were vampires, fearing the light of the day). He commands the sun as he commands every breath from Kageyama’s chest, ordering it to shine through his skin, as if it were paper.
The sun turns light skin to fire, red and pinks licking through that paper-skin, and this, this is the Hinata Shouyou that Kageyama sees. You know, sometimes, when you meet a person, that they are more than their frame, something greater and wilder and deeper than a human. Something ancient as magic and powerful as the soul of a warlord lingers in Hinata. It’s the reason he draws the eyes of strangers to him, the reason he can fly—he is more than a human. It’s the reason Kageyama stands frozen, unthawed as the tundra in the dead of winter, cold and lifeless without the sun.
Hinata plays with that light filtering in (children shouldn’t play with fire, shouldn’t play with fire, Tobio why do you never listen, why do you strike the match, why do you help him to burn so brightly) so easily Kageyama finds it hard to believe he is not a god in the flesh, playing around with the silly humans while it amuses him. Kageyama knew him when he was a child, yes, but in this moment, their history doesn’t matter and the young Hinata who had declared if you’re the king of the court, than I will defeat you and be the last one standing can’t cast a shadow on the one who burns away the darkness with every exhalation.
(Kageyama was never good at playing on the sidewalk, following directions, staying where it was safe.)
(And besides, who wouldn’t fan Hinata’s flame; who wouldn’t become a pyromaniac, consumed with the bright of his own personal candle/bonfire/wildfire; who wouldn’t commit arson for someone like Hinata, who wouldn’t burn down their own home just to see how their own pyre would let his embers soar?)
There is nothing contained about Hinata, nothing safe, nothing careful. He revels in recklessness and spits on caution; worships instinct and condemns strategy. He should be the lit wick of a stick of dynamite, sparking bright until he inevitably exploded in a cascade of destruction, harming everyone in his path. Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe he might have, but Kageyama was a fire-eater and he consumed Hinata long ago, letting him warm Kageyama from the inside out.
In his heart, there was a glow with the name Hinata Shouyou emblazoned across it. Some people are born with their soulmates—some people make them. Theirs was a bond born of hardship and suffering and trust that both came naturally and was built upon a series of mistake and wrong turns made right. They weren’t perfect. They didn’t mesh like their senpai in the past. They clashed and scraped, a whetstone honing a blade. They knew nothing but love; they knew nothing but combat.
Hinata lies before Kageyama, a victim or the victor, it doesn’t matter this early in the morning. Head thrown back, spread-eagled as a fallen angel; as vulnerable as a newborn and as impenetrable as a fortress. Kageyama thinks of wringing his neck. He thinks of cupping his face. His chest is bare, bars of light waking his grey skin from sleeping and raising him from the dead. Each slope of muscle and peach fuzz hair makes Kageyama dig his nails into his hands.
Hinata turns his eyes on Kageyama, the lazy stirring of molasses. Everything about the action is thick and syrupy, cloying Kageyama’s throat when Hinata regards him and parts his lips (a cupid’s bow Kageyama is too slow to flee), deigning to speak to Kageyama in the same low voice that has always felt to Kageyama as if gasoline were being poured on him, soaking him head to toe in danger:
“Tobio. Come here.”
It’s global warming and the inevitable pull of the tides that pulls Kageyama to meet Hinata, chest to chest, sparks of static between them that threaten to spark the gasoline and blow Kageyama sky high, but that’s what Kageyama is there for. Contain the fire. Mollify the danger. Focus Hinata, hone Hinata, make him into a weapon.
He rests his head just under Hinata’s chin so that he can here the steady thrum of Hinata’s heartbeat anchoring him to the world. You are impossibly powerful, Kageyama wants to tell him. You don’t know the strength you possess. You could have the world at your feet, if you truly desired it.
But he doesn’t tell Hinata. That’s his job, too. Make the world see Hinata in all his glory, make them acknowledge him, but let Hinata figure out the truth on his own. Kageyama is only the guide. So he kisses each of Hinata’s fingers, each callous and the stories behind them, and is surprised when his lips don’t burn.
Perhaps he should say something of his early morning thoughts, but some things are too heavy for the day, and with every moment that passes them by, the trance of the dream-world fades and the words that form on Kageyama’s tongue sound less and less like the thoughts of fire trapped in ice or men wrapped in sunlight or angels with sheet-thin wings of white and more like the ramblings of a mad man.
“What are you thinking of?” Hinata asks him.
“I’m thinking I should say good morning, Shouyou.”
“And the rest?”
“The rest you already know.”
“Ah…well, in that case, then…good morning, Tobio.”
And they are still.