Work Text:
You’d never have met Hoshiumi Korai without your need to prove yourself.
He’d never fallen in love with you if not for his competitiveness.
-
“Hey!” Hoshiumi steps in front of you, sweat still dripping from his hairline. “Aren’t you going to interview me?”
Hirugami turns around instantly, not as tuned in to his antics as his little brother had been.
“Why? Do you have something to say?” You flick your notepad back open and eye him, but he can’t quite figure out how you feel about the task.
Are you sassing him? Criticizing his height? Here? After a win like this?
He takes a breath before he knows it, the words spluttering out of him with well-known speed and aggression.
He can’t really tell what he’s saying, just that he has said it all before, to other faces.
Only your smile does not turn awkward or frightened or insulted.
Your smirk only seems to grow, edging him on.
And then there’s Hirugami’s hand, grabbing the back of his shirt, lifting him up like a misbehaving cat.
“Hoshiumi! Apologize to the nice lady.”
“No nice lady here, I’m sorry.” You quip back and Hoshiumi blinks, stunned for a moment.
“Now, I know my boss and with the material I already have, I won’t be able to fit any of that impressive speech in this week's article, but I might be able to arrange some things.” You flip your notepad close again, and pull a card out of your pocket, holding it out to him, still dangling two feet above the ground.
“You can call or text me, or you can yell really loud, I’m sure I’ll be able to hear you.”
-
He calls you the next day, going straight to voice mail.
With anyone else, he might have dropped it after that, but he can still picture that daring smile on your face, the challenge in your eyes.
He won’t be defeated this easily.
It takes him an embarrassingly long time to craft a message he feels comfortable with.
Thank god for training, though, the one place he can serve and spike and jump until the nerve endings in his body no longer feel like they’re on fire.
-
Your smile is going to be a problem, he realizes the third time you meet for the article you’re now working on now. You had spent one evening talking about his childhood and how it felt, growing up and playing Volleyball as the shortest on the team. The second time your conversation had drifted more into your past, the two of you quickly engaged in a game of twenty questions.
And now, on your third meeting, he can barely focus on the food in front of him, too engrossed in the pull of your smile, the hook of your lips.
It didn’t matter if you were talking or listening, you always looked like you were thinking about some great joke you were not willing to share.
-
“What are you thinking about?” You ask, head cocked to the side as you eye him over the table.
“How’s the article going?”
“That’s not what you’ve been thinking about.”
“What? You’re able to read my mind now?”
“Hmm, learned it just yesterday.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me what I’m thinking about.” He regrets his words the moment they’re out of his mouth, your eyes widening in way that makes him feel like he’s the prey and you’re the predator, ready to pounce.
Your eyes move over his face, brush over his lips - it’s as if he can feel it, a touch as soft as feathers - before they move back to his eyes and you smile, daring, blazing.
“Do you want to go hiking with me this weekend, Korai?”
-
It’s not that he’s never been hiking before.
He’s just never seen the thrill of it before. Sure, he can be the fastest on the way to the top, but he’d rather be at the beach instead.
That is, until he meets up with you at the ass-crack of dawn, dragging his brand-new hiking boots through the dirt to make them look a little less shiny.
He forgets all about that when you step out of your car, your adorable little sun hat a stark contrast against the way your shorts accentuate your legs.
“Did you put on sunscreen?” You ask.
“Aren’t we going to walk through the woods the whole time anyway?” He asks, looking up at the mountain they’re going to be climbing today, the trees still cast in darkness.
“Sure. But it’s important.” You pull something out of your bag. “Hold still.”
He freezes when he feels your hands on his face, blushing under the tender care of your fingertips. He blushes even more when he sees the cheeky grin on your face.
“How long’s that hike?” He asks.
“About five hours, I think:”
“We could do it in three.” He boasts. “I can carry you if you get tired.”
“Oh, I’m sure you can.” You tease, but let him take the lead.
-
You stop him about halfway into the hike, your hand warm on his bicep.
“Tired already?” He asks, realizing that he does hope you’ll say yes.
You smirk and shake your head.
“Not at all. But if we keep up this pace we’re going to miss the best part of the hike.”
You take his hand without asking and pull him along, away from the marked path.
It probably says a lot about him that he follows you without questioning it, that the way your hand feels in his wipes any doubts from his brain.
-
They don’t have to walk far until he can hear the water, until the trees open up again to a waterfall, the water collecting in a small, deeply turquoise pool.
“Wow.” He says and you squeeze his hand, the smile on your face so different now, yet even more beautiful.
You don’t say it but he feels that this is something important to you, that this moment means more than you let on.
“We could swim.” He offers, trying to break through the sudden shyness that’s taking a hold of him.
Your teasing grin is back again.
“I don’t know if you can.” You say and he furrows his brows at that wording, slipping out of his shoes before he can talk himself out of it.
The water is icy. He manages to keep a straight face and get in until it hits his knees before he realizes that he will never be able to swim here and turns back around to you pressing your hand against your mouth to stop the laughter from spilling out.
“Very funny.” He tells you, his voice dry but the grin spreading on his face betraying his words.
“I’m sorry.” You giggle. “But you were so eager to prove yourself, I couldn’t resist letting you try.”
-
They reach the peak in a bit over three hours.
“You could convince me to like this.” He tells you when you put down a blanket and share a simple meal and a breathtaking view with him.
Something in your face changes. “That’s good to know.”
You look at the view for a second and when you turn your face again, you’re smiling again.
“What’s your biggest dream?”
He laughs, surprised by the sudden change of topics. “You’re really thorough in your work, aren’t you?”
“I’m not asking for the article.”
His jaw clicks shut as he catches your tone, your eyes never leaving his. Blood rushes to his head and his first words are a stuttering mess.
Your hand curls around his and squeezes and his lungs feel as if you squeeze them too, order them to work again.
“I-” He stares down at the valley below, at the tiny houses and the even smaller cars.
It makes him feel so small, but in a good way, for the first time in his life.
“I guess I should say win the Olympics or something like that.” His eyes get caught on a little blue car that’s zooming down a street, disappearing around a corner and appearing again.
For a weird moment he feels like that, alone on the way of life, trying to catch up with the others yet unsure were they left him behind.
Your hand squeezes his again, just as another car turns onto the winding road that leads down the mountain. Hoshiumi smiles, not sure at what, the soft pressure of your fingers or the fact that the little blue car is no longer alone on the road, no longer trying to catch up.
“My parents are so in love, you wouldn’t believe.” He tells you, his voice a bit raspy from emotion. “It used to make us sick how lovey-dovey they can get, my brother and me, I mean.”
He turns and there’s a different kind of smile on your lips, like you know exactly what he’s meaning to say before he says it. Like you’re really able to read in his mind, like you’re the red car following him down the street, telling him without words that he’s not alone in this race.
“I want what they have, one day. I’m just not sure I can, well… there’s no manual to that, right?”
He can’t help turning shy again, his usual confidence pooling out of him.
“My biggest dream was to prove myself.” You say, your voice as clear as the mountain air. “That I could be what I wanted to be even if everyone told me it was impossible.”
“It’s not that my time in High School was that terrible.” You explain, your voice still light but a certain heaviness coats your words.
He squeezes your hand. You tell him of your past, of the comments, made in passing or directly to your face.
“What’s that like?” He asks. “Dyslexia?”
You look at him but your eyes seem to look through him as you speak.
“It’s certainly a disadvantage in my field but it does not automatically imply incompetence or ineptitude.” You tell him, the words sharp enough to cut him if he had not spoken them himself before.
He wants to tell you that he gets it. That he knows exactly what it’s like, even if he has not experienced exactly the same thing.
But his brain and his mouth seem to be unable to agree. He squeezes your hand instead and you smile, the smallest smile he’s seen on you so far.
-
He does not hear from you for three days after that.
On Monday he’d played like a madman, still fueled by the press of your lips to his cheeks.
On Tuesday doubt had begun to creep in, to dig its nasty roots into his heart.
On Wednesday he could barely focus on anything except the one thing he was good at - Volleyball.
He sat in his car after training, chewing on his lip as he stared down at his phone, trying to get you to call him through telepathy alone.
The hike had felt like it meant something. He needed it to mean something.
When the street lights flickered to live around him, his car the only one on the parking lot, he pressed down on your contact and swallowed down his nerves, begging the universe that you’d pick up.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s- uh, it’s Hoshiumi.”
“I know.”
Silence. He could hear his own heart beating in his throat.
“Can I come over?”
“Sure.”
-
You had sounded tired. He takes a detour and picks up some food he had seen you eat before, hoping his instincts aren’t leading him astray this time.
When the door opens, he barely recognizes you. Your hair’s messy, your shirt stained and the bags under your eyes the color of bruises.
“I brought food.” He says, raising the bag in his hand.
The pull of your smile is hard now like your body is made of granite, your lips cut into it with steel.
“I’m not that presentable.”
“I don’t need presentable. I want real.”
There’s a beat of silence, a quiver of your lips. You step aside and let him in.
That night he learns that you cry when you write and you learn that you all hurt the same way when you bleed for the things you love.
-
Months later
“Hey.” He walks over to where you’re checking your bag one last time. “Ushijima says they made the trip in four hours last time. Iwaizumi says that it normally takes five hours.”
“It’s a team building exercise, Korai, not a race.” You remind him and rub sunscreen into his cheeks, sticking your tongue out at him when he crosses his eyes at you.
“I know, I know.” His hands find your hips as he holds you, and grounds you in the middle of it all. The world around you never stops spinning, no matter how much you want it to take a break sometimes.
You share a look, a knowing smirk on his lips and the familiar pull of yours, like you know a joke you won’t yet share. At least not with anyone but him.