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Shouyou does not hate many things.
He is kind and generous and grateful, most of all—accepting the shoddiest of sets as if they’re wonders to behold.
He takes things in stride, turns them into an opportunity, claws his way up a mountain that was never meant for him to climb, finds a way to soar to the top and stay there—victorious.
All throughout the journey, he smiles, grins, laughs feral things of joy and gratitude and determination. And he means it, every single time.
Shouyou does not hate many things.
He did not hate the unforgiving nature of brazilian sand, learned how work with it instead of against it, came to grow strong because of it—will forever be grateful for it.
He did not hate the way the streets sounded different, looked different, smelled different, were different—not home, but a chance to carve himself a new one instead.
He did not like the loneliness, definitely not. He thought he might’ve hated it even, despite not hating many things. He couldn’t help despising it, with its sharp claws and hollow promises of an end, but Shouyou knows better now.
Because what he felt then was nowhere near what he feels now. And if that was hate, then what is this? How could this possibly be ranked on a scale too small for him to express himself in?
So no, he hadn’t liked it, that loneliness back then, but hate? No, Shouyou did not hate loneliness.
He doesn’t hate many things.
But he hates the color blue; hates how it’s the first thing he thinks of when he wakes and the last thing he sees before he sleeps.
He hates how even after, under the dregs of restless dreams that are too big for him to chase, that same blue is all he sees.
He hates how he knows every shade of it, how he can tell the time just by the way it changes hues throughout the day, how he knows the weather from nothing but the richness of its tone.
He hates how he watches it expand, then shrink again—how he keeps watching, over and over and over again until his eyes droop shut, memorizing the way it extends into an endless sea of that same distinct blue, then ebbs away like the temper of the boy behind it.
Perhaps that’s what Shouyou hates about this particular color the most, this blueness that never seems to leave him.
Maybe what he hates isn’t the color at all.
Maybe it isn’t the inevitability of it, or the vastness, or the overwhelming helplessness that he feels when staring at it for too long. Maybe it isn’t that he’s grown tired of seeing the world in shades of blue.
Maybe it isn’t the fluttering it inspires in his stomach, or the heat that creeps into his skin, or the electricity that zips through his body whenever it comes too close for comfort.
Maybe what Shouyou hates is Kageyama Tobio.
Maybe what Shouyou hates is that it’s him who makes him feel so helpless when he’d promised to make him invincible instead.
Maybe what Shouyou hates is that no matter what he tries, he can never get rid of this… thing inside him—that it will creep back in like the tides, inevitable like waves crashing into the shore.
And Shouyou will just have to keep trying to stay afloat while he cannot think of anything but Kageyama, Kageyama, Kageyama, whenever he spots even the smallest inkling of blue. That, like in some twisted, cruel game, he can never escape it—doesn’t seem to want to escape it, despite the lies he tells himself.
He closes his eyes, vows to dream of green grass and white sheep. But that night his thoughts drift to milky clouds floating through an endless sky—blue.
He shifts gears, thinks of wild green woods and dark brown lumber as he falls into the clutches of sleep again. But he skips too far ahead, runs along like he always does, and suddenly finds himself standing at the edge of the woods, ocean looming ahead of him—blue.
Shouyou groans, twists in his dreadful blue sheets until he tires himself out. Maybe if he conjures up his own room? Except his covers, the ones he’s been turning inside out, those are blue.
Memories of volleyball then—blue stripes on a ball and blue accents to a jersey and blue blue blue eyes calculating how best to serve him and-
This isn’t working.
Shouyou heaves a sigh, bordering on a sob as he presses his face into his pillow—blue, that same wretched color as anything else in his life, apparently. It feels good to dampen the fabric, darken the tone until it is almost black.
Excepts black is not much better than blue.
No, this reminds him of other things. Of black hair falling over blue eyes. Of inky locks so incredibly soft that he never wants to feel anything else again—so perfect to card your fingers through when the boy they belong to is far off to dreamland.
Shouyou hopes that maybe, just maybe, that same boy dreams of him tonight; dreams of orange the way he dreams of blues and blacks.
The admission is like a lightning bolt, igniting the blue sky in flashes of white until it blinds him, fueling it with hot anger—dangerous, dangerous, dangerous as it thunders down onto the earth.
It destroys things, inspires a fear in Shouyou even greater than what he feels now.
See, Shouyou does not hate many things, and he does not hate Kageyama Tobio, nor the color blue. All that he hates is that he doesn’t hate them at all.
That he probably never will.
Because here is the truth: Shouyou loves deeply, and fiercely, and unapologetically hard. And Shouyou loves Kageyama Tobio, with all his blacks and blues.
So much that it scares him.
And that, that he hates. The helplessness, the dependency, the fear of falling when he has just earned his wings—when Kageyama was the one to help him acquire them—that he despises.
But not Kageyama. Never Kageyama. Not when Shouyou wakes and bikes to school. When he puts on a jersey and feels anticipation flash through him as hot as the lightning in the sky. Especially not when Kageyama steps up beside him, flashes him a grin along with that cobalt blue shouyou’s come to…
…and tells him to get his head in the game. that they’re going to win—that Kageyama needs him to win.
Shouyou breathes it in, breathes it out, and feels something unwind in his chest. As if detangling a mess that was never supposed to be there, revealing a truth as simple as can be:
That Shouyou is invincible, and that Kageyama makes him so. That while there are so many frightening things in the world, this is not one of them.
Shouyou grins something feral, laced with joy and anticipation and things he does not quite put a name to yet. And he knows that Kageyama feels it too.
This isn’t hate. It might not yet be love either, Shouyou still too scared to think of it as such. But it is something.
It is them.
And that is more than enough, for now. Shouyou takes it with both hands like he does any other thing and runs, jumps, flies until he can figure out what it looks like from the other side. Until he reaches the goal, until Kageyama stands besides him, right there at the top.
Maybe then he’ll call it something different. Maybe then it won’t be theirs alone, but something to share with the world—their world.
But it will still be them. It will still be Shouyou, and it will still be Kageyama too. Of that he is sure, almost as sure as he is of this:
It will still be love. And Shouyou won’t ever hate that.
So he raises his fist, bumps it against Kageyama’s and revels in the sparks that fly between them. He nods once, determined like never before, and feels something drip into his veins, lightning, maybe. But this time, Shouyou isn’t scared.
He’s excited, curious, but grateful most of all. Grateful that this is his life, that this is his partner throughout it. That he only has to take one single look and know that Kageyama will be there, that he’ll stay, that he’ll try his hardest to give him whatever he needs.
That this is the boy he’s fallen in love with, because they’ve done scary things before and came out on top—just where he intends to be. They will do this too, they will be better than he had ever imagined possible, and it will be glorious. With all their oranges and blacks and blues.