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The sun rises in the East.
Asahi gets up at six, goes and draws back the curtains, welcoming the morning sun.
It's a day like any other. His street shoes on asphalt on the way to school, his trainers squeaking on the shiny gym floor during morning practice, scuffing his heels against the linoleum under his desk as he waits for lunch.
“Look,” Suga says when they are standing by the window and overseeing the courtyard, “Nishinoya is spending his break training again.”
Asahi, of course, doesn't need the verbal cue, is already looking, has spotted Nishinoya before the others did.
“No wonder he's so short,” Daichi jokes, “Considering he skips lunch every day.”
Nishinoya is not short, though, not in the ways that count.
His arms are always just long enough to stop the ball from falling and when he walks into a room he owns it, fills it up with his presence, but in a sort of steady way, not forceful, not obtrusive. Nishinoya can be loud like Tanaka and Hinata can be loud, but often he can be silent, too, can listen and watch in rapt attention.
There is something about having someone like Noya at your back during a match. There is something about having him specifically there.
Nishinoya is so vast then, seeming to cover the whole of the court, protecting it, protecting them. Guardian deity indeed.
“I think he's perfect like that,” Asahi says absent-mindedly while Daichi and Suga send him bemused looks.
Somewhere below their window, Nishinoya is still practicing the sets Suga showed him this morning.
Overhead, the sun reaches it zenith.
Asahi chews on the end of his pencil and tries to make sense of the math problems on the blackboard. The teacher says something about finals and future and financial stability while Asahi entertains flights of fancy.
So many people have tried to talk to him about this, adults and peers, his parents, his teachers, his counselors, Sugawara and Daichi and his cousin.
what will you do with your life where do you see yourself next year what kind of career do you wish to pursue where do you want to live where do you want to go which places to you want to see
Asahi's answers are usually a combination of a small shrug, an embarrassed laugh, a hand rubbing the back of his neck, an anxious grimace, an I know I know I don't know yet, but now the fuzzy idea of five years from now takes on a more legible shape.
A small apartment in a small town, a small cat on a small sofa, small hours spent on small kisses and small sighs as Asahi embraces the small shape in his arms.
“Remember that there is more than just one unknown variable,” the teacher reminds them and raps stern knuckles against the blackboard.
Asahi closes his eyes against the glare of the sun through the window.
He kicks up dust on the way to the club room, keeps his eyes on the valiantly tenacious patches of grass, trampled by so many feet, the sunlight burning and brightening it by turns every day.
“Asahi-san,” Nishinoya approaches him as they are all doing their warm-ups, “Can you help me with stretching?”
Asahi glances over to where Tanaka is being berated by Ennoshita. He gives a wry smile.
“Sure,” he says.
Thing is, Noya doesn't really need any help to do his stretches. He can spread his legs as far apart as they go as he sits on the floor and then just folds his upper body forward, fingers curling around his toes, forehead touching his knee.
Asahi still keeps gentle hands on him, carefully pushing against his shoulders. From this point of view he can see the muscles of the insides of Nishinoya's thighs quiver with tight control.
Asahi averts his gaze and licks the salt off his lips.
For the rest of training, he cannot forget the feel of Nishinoya's shoulder blades under his hands nor the bruises that trail across his body. He tries to hit the ball with all his might but somehow always falters in the middle of it.
“Don't mind, don't mind,” the others call though he can feel their eyes on him, curious and worried.
He watches them, too, watches as Nishinoya is being carted around by Tanaka, high-fived by Suga, as he tickles Tsukishima and cuddles Hinata close, as he praises Kageyama and apologizes to Daichi for a minor mistake.
“Asahi-san,” Nishinoya approaches him at some point with a frown on his face and hands on his hips, and he doesn't even have to say any more.
“My bad,” Asahi'ss mouth twists in a chagrined smile, “I have a lot on my mind today.”
“Is this about school?” Noya asks, tilting his head to the side, “I've never seen you this worried about school. Something else then?”
Asahi opens his mouth, catches himself, closes it again.
Noya scrunches up his nose, darts a look around the gym.
“Do you want to talk after training?” he offers tentatively and Asahi bites his lip, begins to shake his head, sees Nishinoya's face fall.
“Yeah,” he says instead, swallowing the lump in his throat, “Maybe.”
Early evening and the sun is slowly sinking low, painting a sheet of gold across the sleepy town.
“Are you walking me home?” Asahi chuckles a little because they have eaten their meat buns and said their goodbyes to the rest of the team, but somehow Nishinoya ended up trailing after him.
“I don't know,” the libero shrugs, shooting off a tiny grin, throwing up his hands to fold them behind his head, twisting to glance up at Asahi, “Depends on when to tell me on what's been on your mind all day.”
“Ah,” Asahi says as though he had forgotten.
They have reached the wooden bridge that leads across the narrow brook close to his house, beyond it the grassy field where kids from the nearby elementary school often play soccer, where Asahi himself used to play before he discovered volleyball. There are no children there yet, no one kicking balls around, so he digs his hands into his pockets, hunches up his shoulders and kicks his own toes against the railing of the bridge, only lightly, though, because it's not the sturdiest thing and he doesn't want it to break.
“You don't have to tell me,” Nishinoya assures him, attuned to Asahi's moments of discomfort as he is. He is standing very straight-backed, arms by his sides, like a student standing to attention in front of the principal, only that Noya couldn't care less about their actual principal.
“But,” he adds, and his eyes are wide open and guileless, “If you want to tell me, I promise I'll keep it a secret. Even from Ryuu. So. Um. I don't know if I can give you any advice, but sometimes just talking about it is enough?”
Asahi cannot help but smile, remembering the beginning of the school year when Noya had pushed and pushed and pushed him out of his comfort zone, or the time before that when they had shouted at each other with sparks in between them, and Asahi so afraid to take a step forward and break Noya that he had instead backed away and broken a broom and himself instead.
There are no sparks now, no danger of setting anything on fire.
On the horizon, the sun is a great orb of crimson, its color bleeding into the sky around it, all quite picturesque, quite lovely.
Asahi keeps his eyes on Nishinoya and knows that, no matter what, Noya would disrespect him more for being untruthful.
“I think I'm in love with you,” he says with the wind tugging at his hair and Nishinoya's mouth falling open.
Asahi waits a beat, but Noya doesn't say anything, despite the fact that Noya always knows exactly what to say, regardless of the situation. Now he only stares at Asahi, completely stunned and speechless, and Asahi knows how to pick his battles.
“I thought so,” he says with a sad smile, “I just wanted to say it anyway.”
With a polite nod he turns to leave, his footsteps thudding hollow on the bridge as Noya just keeps standing there, surrounded by a red sky.
Asahi purses his lips and keeps moving forward.
He's a coward, he's always been a coward. The one time he tries to be brave, he's still disappointed, is still a failure.
So he walks off, dragging his feet a little and hands clenched around the strap of his bag.
As soon as he rounds the corner, though, he falls into a jog, steadily getting faster. By the time he gets home, he is out of breath, nearly sobbing with it. His face is hot and wet with what he tells himself must be sweat.
The sun sets in the West.
He goes to bed early, when it's barely dark outside.
Despite training, though, he is not really tired, just keeps staring up at the ceiling. At least his thoughts are quiet, numb with hurt. Otherwise, he would antagonize over how he would have to face Nishinoya in the morning, during practice, day after day, for the rest of the school year.
He has sort of been dreading graduation for a while now, the thought of no longer seeing his friends, his team, on a regular basis too intimidating for him to be thrilled about finally being done with school. But now it seems like the lesser evil when compared to making things awkward for Karasuno.
Considering that Asahi had been out of it all day and that Nishinoya would surely keep his distance from now on, the others would easily draw the connection from their unusual walk home after training to their sudden silence on the next day.
Suga and Daichi had probably already caught on, and - despite what Noya had said – he'd mostly likely already told Tanaka about the weird confession he had gotten. At least the first-years would be oblivious.
Asahi groans quietly and rolls over onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow, praying for sleep and other mercies.
He doesn't know how many hours he has lain there but suddenly there is a noise in the night and it takes some time to register and then to pinpoint where it comes from, what it is.
Something... is hitting his window, repeatedly but in an irregular rhythm. Eventually it stops and he just stays there in the dark, listening to the silence. But now there is something else, as though something were scratching against the outer wall of the house.
If he were any less numb, he would be scared that it might be a ghost, a burglar. As it is, however, he merely switches on his bedside lamp and sits up.
The scratching continues.
Asahi stands up, walks over to his window and opens it. A gush of pleasantly cool night air hits him, tickling his bangs across his face.
“Asahi-san,” a voice calls out in a whispered shout from somewhere below, so Asahi does a double-take and leans out over the window sill.
“Nishioya?” he asks in disbelief.
Because Nishinoya is climbing the lattices outside, with no care for thorns or splinters, bare fingers digging in between the vines with certainty despite the lack of light, gradually making him way up to the window.
“Let me in, you idiot,” Noya hisses when he has made it but Asahi is still motionless and blocking the way.
“Why didn't you just ring the doorbell?” he asks with wide eyes because that seems to be like the safest question at the moment and he cannot fathom that the other must have thrown pebbles at the window pane instead.
“It's late,” Noya scoffs, blowing his drooping fringe out of his face, “I didn't want your parents to send me off again.”
“My parents are not even home,” Asahi points out, even as he steps back slightly to let the libero climb onto the window sill and crouch there.
“That's even better,” Noya says, grabs his collar and kisses him.
Asahi's instinctive reaction would be to push him away but some part of him remembers that Nishinoya is precariously perched by the open window so he does what he's been wanting to do all day and closes his arms around the other boy instead.
And Asahi doesn't exactly have any experience with kissing so he doesn't know whether this is a good kiss, but it certainly feels good, Noya trying to get closer and closer, his hands in Asahi's loose hair, scrambling forward until he is climbing Asahi like he climbed the lattices, sure and steady, his legs hitched up around Asahi's hips, arms flung around him, and suddenly Asahi is thankful for the fact that Noya is so small in stature because he can hold him so easily, can turn on the spot and instinctively walk them over to the bed.
They fall down together and Noya laughs, Asahi looks at him and breathes, “Nishinoya.”
But Noya just laughs again, pulls him in, says, “I think it's time that you start calling me Yuu.”
Suddenly, the prospect of a long sleepless night does not seem nearly as daunting.
The sun rises in the East.
Asahi wakes up to find Yuu still curled up in his arms.